Catastrophic Historicism: Reading Julia de Burgos Dangerously

Catastrophic Historicism challenges Julia de Burgos's historicist constitution by redefining historicism as the ability to compose totalizing narratives that domesticate the contingency of the past. It reads Poema en 20 surcos (1938) as an embodiment of the lyrical speaker's self-institution as an embodied ipseity, which requires producing racialized/gendered allegorical figures that lack ontological resistance to modern alienation. This book resets the terms of ongoing critiques of historicism and intervenes in Puerto Rican historicity for its transformation.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 02 January 2024
Publisher: Fordham University Press

Catastrophic Historicism is a groundbreaking work that challenges the traditional historical approach of Julia de Burgos, the renowned writer from Puerto Rico. By delving into the works of Aristotle, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Werner Hamacher, and Frank Ankersmit, Mendoza-de Jesús reveals that historicism establishes historical objectivity through the ability of historians to craft comprehensive narratives that domesticate the unpredictable nature of the past. While critiques of historicism as a form of realism may overlook the historian's sovereignty, the book emphasizes the importance of reading history with a sense of caution, a mode that disrupts historicism by infusing the past with a contingency that evades complete appropriation.

After dismantling the monumental tradition that has reduced de Burgos to a symbolic figure, Catastrophic Historicism delves into the poet's first collection, Poema en 20 surcos (1938). Mendoza-de Jesús argues that the historicity of Poema emerges in the lyrical speaker's self-institution as an embodied ipseity, which necessitates the creation of racialized/gendered allegorical figures—the embodiments of an abject flesh—that lack any ontological resistance to modern alienation. Instead of treating de Burgos's poetics of selfhood as the ideal representation of Puerto Rican sovereignty, Mendoza-de Jesús jeopardizes this idealization by drawing attention to the abjection that sustains our attachments to ipseity as the form of a truly sovereign life. In this way, Catastrophic Historicism not only redefines the parameters of ongoing critiques of historicism within the humanities but also intervenes in Puerto Rican history to promote its transformation.

Weight: 508g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781531505646