In his landmark study Tristes Tropiques (1955; 1967), Claude Lévi-Strauss observes what he calls the «mutilated condition» of the anthropologist with the following words: «At home, the anthropologist may be a natural subversive, a convinced opponent of traditional usage: but no sooner has he in focus a society different from his own than he becomes respectful of even the most conservative practices» (381). «The dilemma is inescapable», he continues. «[E]ither the anthropologist clings to the norms of his own group, in which case the others can only inspire in him an ephemeral curiosity in which there is always an element of disapproval; or he makes himself over completely to the objects of his studies, in which case he can never be perfectly objective, because in giving himself to all societies he cannot but refuse himself, wittingly or not, to one among them» (382).

Leaving aside for the moment such questions as the existence of «objectivity» and what I would call the inherent racism of a certain brand of anthropology -I do not mean that of Lévi-Strauss- it seems to me that the above remarks, mutatis mutandis, might well be taken to describe the double bind in which U. S. Brazilianists find themselves with respect to Brazilian literature and culture.⁹⁶ Not that theirs is a unique case in the world. Indeed, the analogy would seem to apply as well in varying degrees to cross-cultural scholars in other disciplines and of other nationalities: Italian semioticians who study North American popular culture, political scientists from Lima researching voting patterns of highland Peruvian Indians, or Angolan musicologists investigating the African origins of Brazilian samba. The particular response of the scholar to the dilemma in these and similar cases is, of course, of paramount importance to the success or failure of the research, to its academic integrity. However, it is, to my mind, nowhere as crucial as in those situations involving first-world scholars who undertake studies of third-world cultures.

The case of the U. S. Brazilianist literary critic, then, is not only one that is «close to home», so to speak, but also one that has significant implications, I believe, for other first-world scholarship on third-world literary, historical and social-science topics, among others. Following the Lévi-Strauss formulation, one could characterize the Brazilianist literary scholar as being poised between the norms of her own Eurocentric, primarily white Protestant hegemonic society and those of a culturally dependent, peripheral people, which, though nominally Catholic and largely identifying with European and U. S. culture, is primarily mestiço,⁹⁷ having fused indigenous and African cultural elements with those of the Portuguese colonizer. Admittedly, this description is oversimplified. It loses in sharpness what it gains in coherence. References to sexism are omitted in both instances; so too are the contributions and numerous and ongoing cases of repression of the cultures of Native Americans, Blacks and other minorities.

Nevertheless, such a description would seem to imply the same pitfalls as the anthropological model. By continuing to espouse first and foremost the norms of the dominant U. S. society from which he comes, the Brazilianist literary scholar will inevitably regard those of Brazil, along with its literature and culture, with some disapproval, as something exotic but ultimately flawed when compared to the «real thing», as it were. Should he, on the other hand, decide to cast his lot with Brazilian cultural and literary values, in an attempt to shed his ethnocentrism and identify more closely with the object of his research, he runs the risk of countenancing practices that he might well condemn in his own country. The one attitude ranges from open condescension   —605→   and endorsement of cultural imperialism, in its «strong» form, to a kind of patronizing indulgence, an avuncular pat on the head, in its «weak» form. It is often further complicated by the fact that many U. S. Brazilianists come to Brazilian studies through Spanish and Spanish American culture; thus many of them tend to see Brazilian literature and culture through a double optic, a dual ethnocentrism of sorts. The second attitude, on the other hand, often has the effect of romanticizing or idealizing Brazilian cultural and literary practices, and thus ironically places the Brazilianist scholar in the company of those who in Brazil would be regarded as ufanistas.⁹⁸ It is essentially utopian in character. But is the second posture not also ultimately a form of patronization? Indeed, the two attitudes in the end would appear, to some degree, to collapse into one another, as if to form a Möbius strip.

The fundamental similarity of the two attitudes can best be seen, I think, by transcoding our rudimentary taxonomy into the terms of sameness, Otherness (capital O) and otherness (lower-case o). By same, I mean to refer to the self, to ipseity; by other (lower-case o), I refer to the «true» or «radical» other, that which is totally discontinuous with ipseity; and by Other (capital O), as is now the custom, I designate the «exotic» or «reflected» other, which is more an extension of the self than it is an accurate picture of the genuine alterity of the radical other. In his essay «Apesar de Dependente, Universal», published in the volume Vale Quanto Pesa, Silviano Santiago has used this schema to show that the letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha to Dom Manuel I ultimately tells us more about the mentality of the European colonizer than it does about the indigene of Pindorama:

Seen in terms of this schema, then, the Brazilianist's dilemma would be one of choosing between an exotic and negatively valorized simulacrum of Brazilian literature and culture, on the one hand, and an idealized but no less exotic stereotype of Brazilian literature and culture, on the other. Both alternatives are in their own way reflected extensions of his own ipseity. Is the acceptance of the so-called «radical other», then, something that is unattainable by the outsider, be he Portuguese colonizer or U. S. Brazilianist? Todorov, in his Conquest of America, proffers a tripartite typology of relations to the other, in which he identifies an axiological level (Is the other good or bad? Do I love him or not? Is he my equal or my inferior?); a praxeological level (Do I embrace the other's values? Do I identify with him? Or do I identify the other with myself, imposing my own image on him?); and an epistemic level (Do I know the other's identity or am I ignorant of it?) [185]. Conflating this schema with our own would seem to solve no problems, however. The answers to questions one and three, those of the axiological and epistemic levels respectively, will vary according to the two attitudes that we have identified, along with the particular nuances of the individual case. It is on the second, or praxeological, level, however, that we run into trouble. For both of the attitudes identified by Lévi-Strauss at bottom constitute impositions of the researcher's values on the researchee, whether they are essentially narcissistic or naively utopian in nature. The Todorovian model, albeit a useful tool in many first-world-third-world cross-cultural situations, is thus inadequate for our purposes here.

I should like to propose an alternative approach, which though it is in no way original, better accounts, in my opinion, for the particular circumstances of the U. S. Brazilianist literary scholar vis-à-vis Brazilian literature and culture. The foregoing considerations go a long way towards understanding some of the questions involved in the problematic at hand. But they are limited, as I see it, for they do not come to grips with other questions that are just as germane to the topic. I shall begin by focusing on the specificity of the role of the first-world scholar, both with respect to the third-world object of her study and in relation to her audience, which I think is of crucial importance. Secondly, I shall consider the role of the literary critic in general, contrasting it with that of the anthropologist. And, finally, I shall attempt to synthesize the sundry deliberations of this discussion and say a few words about what I regard as a «proper» role for the U. S. Brazilianist literary critic, not in an effort to establish rigid norms by which to govern the critic's behavior but rather with the hope of fashioning a useful grid against which scholars will be able to gauge their own individual attitudes.

It has been alleged by some critics that the relationship between first-world researcher, native informant and the third-world object of the investigation is inherently colonialist.⁹⁹ While he does not seem to go quite so far, Edward Said, in his ground-breaking work Orientalism (1978) has described the complicity of nineteenth-century «Orientalist» scholars with the British and French colonialist projects in the Middle East and India.¹⁰⁰ «Orientalism... is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment» (6). «In all cases the Orient is for the European observer» (158). «The Orientalist was an expert, like Renan or Lane, whose job in society was to interpret the Orient for his compatriots. The relation between Orientalist and Orient was essentially hermeneutical» (222). «Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West» (22). The Orient became for Europe, he claims, «one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other» (1),¹⁰¹ and, although it had little to do with the actual Orient, Orientalism was an internally consistent body of knowledge that took the place in the European mind of any authentic understanding of the region. The Orientalist, willingly or unwillingly, thus became the handmaiden, the advance guard of European colonialism.

Just what the implications of this are for today's U. S. Latin Americanist and Brazilianist scholars is not entirely clear. Are we to suppose that, whatever the attitude taken by the first-world researcher with regard to the third-world object of her study, the resulting scholarship will inevitably be diverted by colonialist interests to some nefarious end? Or is there some way to avoid this complicity? Jameson, in his essay on the notion of «national allegories» in third-world literature, goes so far as to assert that «any articulation of radical difference... is susceptible to appropriation by that strategy of otherness [read «Otherness»] which Edward Said... called 'orientalism'», (77) regardless of whether the radical otherness in question is valorized positively or negatively. But he sees no way to forgo the operation «without falling back into some general liberal and humanistic universalism» and thus abdicating the first-world intellectual's responsibility to remind the American public of the radical difference of other national situations» (77).

I would suggest that the solutions to these questions lie to some degree not only with the first-world researcher's attitude toward the object of her investigation, but also with the identity of her audience. Obviously, there may be a difference between one's intended audience and one's actual audience; by the same token, a given work of scholarship may reach multiple audiences, each with its own formation, interpretive strategy and ideological agenda. Nonetheless, it would seem to me to be useful here to inquire as to the identity of the U. S. Brazilianist literary critic's primary audience or audiences? Is it U. S. policy makers or business executives? American university students? the U. S. public at large? U. S. academics in the same or other fields? university tenure committees? colleagues in Brazil or other countries?

Whatever the discrepancies between intended and actual audiences, indeed irrespective of the existence of secondary and tertiary audiences, I would venture to guess that those groups primarily interested in such literary researches will be the scholar's fellow U. S. Brazilianist literary critics and, at least potentially, the much larger group of Brazilian and other, non-Brazilian critics of Brazilian literature. (The traditional parochialism and lack of communication among these sectors is an important topic deserving separate treatment). It is indeed true that a few works of Brazilianist literary scholarship -primarily books- will reach academics in other fields and even a general U. S. audience. But the majority will not. Thus, the notion that the Brazilianist literary critic's function is primarily one of explaining a colonized culture to the colonialist is, to my mind, highly suspect.

Indeed, it seems to me that just as important as the Brazilianist's attitude toward the object of her research -in fact, perhaps more so- is the question of whom she is addressing and for what purpose. I have often found it necessary -as I'm sure you all have- to remind my beginning language students, particularly the Anglophones, that, as incredible as it may seem, Portuguese was not made to be translated into English or any other language. By the same token, neither is Brazil, Brazilian culture or Brazilian literature simply «out there» to be interpreted or decoded to, by, or for North Americans. The emphasis placed by Said on the essentially hermeneutic role of the Orientalist -to interpret the supposedly inscrutable and sensuous Oriental for the benefit of nineteenth-century Europeans- goes to the crux of the matter. For it is just such a   —607→   posture that serves to deny colonized peoples their own histories, their own narratives, as Said himself has observed elsewhere, making them but footnotes in the histories of their colonizers.¹⁰² A brief look at the critic's role will further elucidate the issue.

In another of Lévi-Strauss' works, La Pensée sauvage (1962; The Savage Mind, 1966), he likens what he refers to as «mythical thought» to the activity of bricolage (16-22). The bricoleur, or tinker, he observes, makes do with the material at hand, organizing the remains of previous structures into new ones, unlike the engineer or scientist, who, in his opinion, creates original structures ex nihilo. Building on this formulation, Genette has analogized the engineer to the writer, the bricoleur to the literary critic. The critic, he asserts is a «maker of parasitic structures» (145); like the bricoleur, he creates by using the works of others as his building blocks. And, finally, an opposing view is put forward by Derrida, who in his L' Écriture et la différence (1967; Writing and Difference, 1978), declares categorically that «the engineer is a myth produced by the bricoleur» (285). Indeed, every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage, he claims; nothing is created from whole cloth. The scientist and the engineer are also bricoleurs; we are all bricoleurs. This egalitarian notion has been further extended by several of the American followers of Derrida, who have contended that the literary critic, far from being a mere parasite, is first and foremost a creator of more text.¹⁰³ There is no hors-texte, as Derrida himself has observed, no Archimedean pou sto from which the critic can escape the confines of the general text.

Critic as parasite or as creator himself of more text? Unlike the anthropologist, who must indeed maintain the necessary fiction of his observer status in order to produce an «objective», or value-neutral investigation -an impossibility, to my way of thinking- the literary critic is at his best, his truest in his role as a dialogist. Rather than interpreting cultural texts or the minds of those who create them for his colleagues or countrymen -the stock in trade of the anthropologist- the literary critic is blessed with the luxury of being able to dialogue with the very texts -and in some cases with the authors- that are the objects of his research, without any fear of contaminating them by adding his voice to the colloquium. Such is denied the anthropologist, whether he be of the older racist mold, interpreting in Orientalist fashion the societies of «primitives» for the «civilized» metropolis, or, like Lévi-Strauss, engaged in a more modern anthropology based on theory and structure, one that is applicable to peripheral and metropolitan societies alike.

The U. S. Brazilianist literary critic, then, is ideally involved in a dialogue, not only with Brazilian authors and other literary critics, Brazilian and non-Brazilian, but also with the texts they create.¹⁰⁴ In a sense, he is himself a dialogically constituted text, discoursing, indeed intertextualizing, with other written and human texts so constituted. Not from a privileged position, to be sure, but from a different one, an other one. There can be no illusions. He is indeed, as the Post-Structuralists would have it, on a par with the written and human texts he engages, a bricoleur and a parasite like all others, to be sure, but also a creator of more text. About the only major difference between him and his interlocutors, then, is that they are Brazilian and he is not. Nor can he ever be. He may live half his life reading Drummond, eating feijoada, dancing samba and rooting for Flamengo, to cite a few common stereotypes of the kind Oswald de Andrade was wont to label macumba para turistas.¹⁰⁵ But, North American he shall always remain, at least to a substantial degree.

There is indeed something paradoxical if not oxymoronic in the call to shed our ethnocentrism even as we are aware of the impossibility (and perhaps the undesirability) of doing so completely. So what then? Is the first-world researcher of third-world culture -the Brazilianist literary scholar of our narrative- forever doomed to be an outsider? Probably. Will this always be a handicap for him? Not necessarily. The opposite point could be made -perhaps with equal validity (and I again defer to Lévi-Strauss)- that once the Brazilianist critic has become to some degree «Brazilianized», as it were -however unattainable the consummation of this process may be- he will never see his own culture in the same ethnocentric light either. He will become for all practical purposes a foreigner in his own land as well.

Julia Kristeva has suggested that «a person of the twentieth century can exist honestly only as a foreigner» (286). I am reminded here too of the title of Caetano Veloso's recent LP, Estrangeiro, and of interviews with the U. S. media in which he has noted, with a mixture of pride and regret, his own feeling of being a «foreigner» or «outsider» both in and out of Brazil.¹⁰⁶ The ancient Athenians   —608→   used the term metoikos, «one who changes residence», to refer to the resident aliens among them, to the «barbarians» in their midst. It would seem to me that U. S. Brazilianists, like Brazilian Americanists, French anthropologists or Japanese archaeologists, are -or should be, if they are doing their jobs right- forever doomed to playing the role of the metoikos, both in their own and in their adopted societies, and that indeed such a role is perhaps the most salutary and worthiest of imitation for human beings in general.

Not that one should refrain from expressing sympathy for or opposition to the practices of either culture. Quite the contrary. For only from a vantage point of a certain alienation, of seeing one's own society and others in a defamiliarized light can one begin to decenter and desacralize the idées reçues of those societies, to unmask that which is regarded as «natural» or «given» in them as nothing more than arbitrary constructs.¹⁰⁷

In order to shed the exuviae of one's ethnocentrism, then, to peel away the filters through which we tend to see the other, the first-world scholar need not deny the specificity of her particular coign of vantage on third-world societies. Just as Brazilians and others from countries outside the United States have a unique perspective on North American culture, first-world scholars, by the very detachment of their positions, have a great deal to contribute to third world scholarship, be they U. S. Brazilianists or German archaeologists. Neither wholly first-world nor entirely third-world in their views, they are very much liminal beings. Not in the dynamic sense that they are on the threshold of some new life-altering experience, some epiphanic revelation, but rather that they, like the narrator in the opening scene of Balzac's Sarrasine, as seen through Barthes' S/Z, are firmly perched astride the sill between exteriority and interiority. As resident foreigners, they are both inside and outside at the same time, in a prolonged limbo, so to speak.¹⁰⁸ And, as they attempt to decenter their interpretive discourses, to see others on their own terms and themselves as others see them, in a word to empathize, they may also wish to consider another remark of Lévi-Strauss, which I have taken the liberty of paraphrasing: «He is what he has chosen to be, a first-world scholar of third-world cultures; therefore, he must accept the mutilated condition which is the price of his vocation. He has chosen and must accept the consequences of his choice: his place lies with 'the others', and his role is to   —609→   dialogue with. them» (Tristes Tropiques, 384-85).

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 74, Number 3, September 1991