Iberian Studies: Reflections Across Borders and Disciplines

Reseña de: Núria Codina Solà y Teresa Pinheiro (eds.), Iberian Studies: Reflections Across Borders and Disciplines, Berlin, Peter Lang, 2019, 330 págs.

Luzes e sombras nos Estudos Ibéricos

Em 2011 teve lugar em Lisboa o encontro Looking at Iberia from a Comparative European Perspective, financiado pela European Science Foundation, no qual foi apresentada uma palestra intitulada “Iberian Studies: a state of the art and future perspectives”. Dez anos depois da apresentação original daquele texto, é provavelmente um bom momento para analisar em que sentido e até que ponto os Estudos Ibéricos avançaram nas linhas previstas em 2011. Trata-se, em definitivo, de realizar uma reavaliação crítica da evolução dos Estudos Ibéricos, depois de uma década de trabalho e desenvolvimento, de forma a identificar as suas forças e fragilidades, focar naquelas áreas nas quais existiu, até agora, um claro défice de investigação, e tentar contrariar as rotinas ou inércias estabelecidas ao longo destes dez últimos anos, para evitar que o campo dos Estudos Ibéricos se transforme, paradoxalmente, num novo mecanismo de consolidação dos cânones, narrativas e discursos dominantes.

Iberian studies: reflections across borders and disciplines Núria Codina Solà y Teresa Pinheiro (Eds.). Berlín: Peter Lang (Col. Estudios Hispánicos En El Contexto Global, 8), 2019. 328 páginas. ISBN 9783631794357

Sin duda, en los últimos años estamos asistiendo al auge de la disciplina que se conoce como estudios ibéricos o Iberian Studies, auge que se traduce en un interés renovado hacia este campo y en un crecimiento notable de los estudios centrados en las relaciones entre distintos ámbitos de la Península Ibérica.

Gli Studi Iberici: passato, presente, futuro

This article intents to offer a panoramic view of the field of Iberian Studies, a fairly young academic field devoted to the study of Iberian literatures and cultures, which has gained some level of recognition and visibility in recent years. I will present its multiple genealogy, its different origins and theoretical foundations in diverse geographical and academic spaces; its current state, with a quantitative and qualitative analysis of its publications and of its level of institutionalization, and some proposals for its future development, based on the most recent debates and criticisms about this discipline. I will try to show that, without any intention of becoming homogenic or hegemonic, Iberian Studies have promoted new ways of studying Iberian cultures superseding linguistic, political or academic barriers.

Iberisticamente: gli Studi Iberici e la postcritica

In this epilogue, I frame the approach or the ‘attitude’ of Iberian Studies in the contemporary panorama of research and knowledge. Here, the use of terms such as ‘attitude’ or ‘subjectivity’ referred to this field has a metaphorical function and does not imply prescriptive intentions. The aim, instead, is to compare some particular characteristics of the Iberian Studies with other movements that are partly similar, like Postcritique. I explain why I call these movements ‘new’, especially from the point of view of the ‘attitude’, in order to analyse some dynamics and interactions with others movements that I call ‘old’.

Pensare gli Studi Iberici in Italia

This chapter proposes a preliminary approach to the status of Iberian Studies in Italy (its existence as a field of study, its potential, and possible problems). The author’s approach attends to a tradition of studies which has its roots in Romance Philology, Comparatism and Iberism, as well as to more recent endeavours in the field. First, drawing on Joan Ramon Resina’s book (2009), the author discusses the reasons to pursue Iberian Studies in Italy. Then, the origins of the interest towards the discipline and its practices are analysed in order to understand if they are related to a possible crisis of Hispanism (as happened, for example, in the United States). Finally, the author compares Iberian Studies with related disciplinary fields within the Italian academy.

Avanguardie e Studi Iberici

This chapter aims to study the relationship between Avant-garde and Iberian Studies from a linguistic-semiotic perspective through the mediation of the work Literaturas europeas de vanguardia (1925) by Guillermo de Torre, initiator of the chain of European monographic studies dedicated to the study of avant-garde art. The network of Lusophone Modernisms and Vanguards in Catalan and Castilian, the multicultural and multilingual continuum that takes shape in the Peninsula and that propagates in Latin America, especially in the twenty years 1909-29, can in fact be considered today as a dynamic interletterary and intermedial polysystem.

Ripensare la penisola iberica come zona di traduzione

This contribution aims to outline the links between Iberian Studies and Translation Studies, seek new points of connection and reflect on the advantages of a more intense disciplinary approach. This chapter contends that the Spatial Turn, that is, the growing concern for space and the new ways of understanding it from the social sciences and the humanities, has had important epistemological and methodological repercussions in Iberian Studies and also, although to a lesser extent, in Translation Studies, making space a common element that enables and justifies a closer dialogue between these disciplines.

Studi Iberici. Dialoghi dall’Italia

Iberian Studies have developed in the last quarter of a century to the point of making one speak of a real Iberian Turn. Starting from the rejection of the classic scheme that places the two states (Portugal and Spain) as privileged agents of the representation of the Iberian space, the proposal of the Iberian Studies is to work on the system of historical exchanges and interferences that have shaped the cultural fabric of the peninsula, investigating both the points of connection as much as those of the fracture between its different realities (such as the Basque, Catalan and Galician ones, as well as the Castilian and Lusitanian ones). Accompanied by a “Reasoned Bibliography on Iberian Studies and Iberian Studies from Italy”, this volume examines the state of the art, with particular attention to the Italian context, in which these researches show a still unequal rooting and diffusion. A first section, dedicated to a general framework of the discipline and the exposition of theoretical issues and method problems, is followed by a second that presents critical contributions that address individual case studies. Born in part as a reaction to the so-called “crisis of Hispanism”, Iberian Studies offer themselves as an alternative to the traditional model of peninsular Hispanism, to its uninational and monolingual paradigm. They also place the emphasis on diversity and the relational aspect, looking with suspicion at every hegemonic design aimed at establishing a “centre” within a heterogeneous cultural landscape. Attentive to the phenomena of immigration and linguistic minorities, to the colonial past and relations with the Latin American world, but also to the themes of comparativism, translation, theory and the rethinking of criticism, Iberian Studies are a field in which not only debates about literature and the arts are included, but also about ideology.