Alfredo Saldaña, Not everything is surface. English poetry and postmodern , University of Valladolid, Publications Service, Valladolid, 2009, 258 pp.
I may live in 1908, my neighbor, however, by 1900, and beyond, in 1880.
Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime (1908)
1929 seems a long one, but it's 1929 lives a boy, a man mature and old, and that number triples in three different meanings (...) is the unit of historical time three different ages.
José Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy? (1929)
In a recent book, Prof. M ª del Pilar Lozano Mijares framed the professor and poet Alfredo Saldaña in a theoretical direction that characterized as "postmodern hopeful" [2] , characterized by the critical deconstruction of the system accompanied by proposals for reconstruction. Indeed, one Saldaña researchers more systematic and unrelenting in pursuit of an updated and consistent concept of postmodernity, especially when the term is associated with contemporary English poetry. After several papers published for that purpose and closing them in more ways than one, is now Not everything is surface that delves into the clearing and develops some of their lines of work.
Saldaña faces, as noted in the first sentence of the trial, a titanic effort that can run (who tried it, I know) the fate of the most daring "to think of a time and place from their own coordinates" (p. 15). It is true that the risk is as large as necessary, the good health of a literature, a culture, is contrasted by their level of commitment autorepresentacional, in the way that episteme referred and self-review same, in a really critical, questioning their epistemological principles and not just the concrete results of his artistic production. A study of this limited to the works and not dive into the budgets that support and partly (only partly) explain these works is an overview false, that is carried away by what this production has the tendency . This must be done even if it can be concluded that comes in Labrador Germain comprehensive study of poetry and drugs in the English transition, Lyrics taken from "progress toward closing this discourse, it involved a contradiction substantial: the same speech that seeks to find its search engine and mobility essential closeness of the texts in which it is based has noted, in its articulation, closure and the remoteness of the same " [3] . In short, if the analysis of the status quo want to talk, as not all surface, the relationship of a postmodern textual environment, the constant presence of the idea of \u200b\u200bself-consciousness has to be nuclear in the construction of the study, and it must take the risks that over-selfconsciousness . Saldana knows this and that select to open the book quotes one of the most self-conscious of world literature: the verses of Portrait in a Convex Mirror Ashbery in Vasari described the moment the Parmagianino take the brush and the glass sphere to portray, a gesture that Ashbery uses to focus his own self and the boundaries of poetry as performance.
may surprise the reader who hopes to find a book on English poetry that Not everything is surface not start talking about this issue until page 103 . The first part is devoted entirely to delve into the concept of postmodernism, one hand trying to make a description and other diagnosis. Introduction is long, but maybe it needed to bring the concept before going on to study its nuances and its impact on contemporary poetry. So carefully is that postmodernism is a very controversial category, where everything is at stake, and where conflicting forces beat, not in vain in Eagleton says The Illusions of Posmodernism that "posmodernism (...) is Both radical and conservative together " [4] , to give a simple example to the ideology of the postmodern approach, something that is widely spoken in the pages of Saldaña. One category that of postmodernity, on which are still more abundant negative views than positive. Roger Bartra, putting it as an example of the first vision, The Waste Land Eliot is a metaphor to describe the crisis that is fracturing of modernity during the twentieth century up to the wasteland of the postmodern " [5] . However, Saldaña shows a favorable attitude to true understanding of the postmodern. Points out, quite rightly, that "postmodernity has been less belligerent to their immediate past that modernity with his " (p. 85), and can be found several plot lines and practices that many lines would give a picture of postmodernism as a discourse capable of being critical rigorously aesthetic and poetically fertile. The only criticism of this long introduction is that it seems built like a patchwork different texts, which would explain some unnecessary repetition (vgr., the debate on postmodernism as a continuation of modernity, the idea of \u200b\u200bhistory as Benjamin, the critical potential of the avant-garde) that slide along the exhibition.
One of the central purposes of the book is to analyze the presence of what he calls Saldaña "postmodern critical sensibility" in a series of representative texts, in their view, the English poetry after 1960. The concept of what would be a "post-modern English poetry is, of course, complex and controversial, in fact, almost every author who has studied has its own ideas about it, ranging from broad visions and general to the closest. In the latter side, the poet Agustín Fernández Mallo has given his own answer, something radical: "the poetry in this country was called, and still is between the critics and certain autologous, postmodern poetry , poetry comes at a particular moment, in the early 80's with the consolidation of democracy, little or nothing to do with the meanings sociological, philosophical and aesthetic commonly accepted by this term, we would say even more: is absolutely contrary to the budgets of these " [6] . This assertion, however, is not entirely misguided if we think in a rigorous concept of postmodernism, characterized not by one but by all or most of the characters that the traditional doctrine has been saying: metaliterature, self-referentiality, intertext, irony, pastiche , parody, post-genericity, weak ideology, hybridity, questioning of power and great stories, etc. Saldaña's position, however, is limited to the study of those texts that he represent lines of postmodern critical sensibility, in its view, have the strength enough to represent aesthetic an exception to the general pointed out by Fernández Mallo. Dispenses so rightly generational criteria for review of the literature study looking for certain lines of tension. The most significant, in his view, is what comes up of what he calls aesthetic otherness, which is characterized by playing a certain way (waiving unifying discourse, discontinuity, prosaic deliberate transgressive attitudes, cf. p. 109) certain themes (sexuality, eroticism, grotesque, criticism of the established language and discourses of power, cf. pp. 193ss), and a sensibility that holds in the dissolution of the classical canon of beauty in the breakdown and decomposition of the unity and totality of the organizational structure of the work of art "(p. 230). Furthermore, it also highlights, which are for me the best pages of the trial (221ss) the relationship between fragment and silence and their mark on contemporary poetics, as lead story more remarkable poetic postmodernity. In this sense, the authors repeatedly stressed Saldaña are more Leopoldo María Panero and Jenaro Talens, followed far behind by Eduardo Hervás, Fernando Merlo, Angel Petisme, Ignacio Prat, Riechmann, etc. This type of alternative canons, with selections of different names for (almost) always used, enrich the landscape and point to it as a whole, rather than a metonymy and dominant portion of it, something very common in the literature use.
In any book that comes close to postmodernity is easy to find items with those who disagree, by the same inasibilidad and category fluency. I would like to discuss certain issues raised by Saldaña. The first consideration that "must be accepted with Gianni Vattimo (1987) that the end of the vanguard is an event radical changes imposed by the social relations of human beings and that the very concept of art is irrelevant to him-from theorizing about contemporary art "(p. 16). We are seeing a trend lately, I think more than necessary, redefinition of terms and concepts in our time. Steven Shaviro is working on a book to redefine the traditional concept of "beauty" and adjust to our time perspective; D. Driedichsen try to update the concept of "value added", and Boris Groys makes great efforts to try to clarify what it is today "new." These three concepts have several centuries old, the most recent is the surplus value and goes back to the theories of Marx, so that also goes birthday. I think more to consider irrelevant the concept of art you have to do is redefine it, doing elaborations (as serious as those, obviously) intended for knowing what it can mean forefront today, but there is one fact obvious, is that the lead is still working and evidence of this is that, as pointed out by Gustavo Guerrero, some of the best renovation of Latin American narrative (Bellatin, Aira, or Tabarovsky, etc.) is happening precisely because the reprocessing of the avant-garde techniques, updating this [7] . Miguel Casado uses the term poetry long (next to Anglo-Saxon poetry expanded) to describe this current poetry, a formula close to surrealism, makes the concept of thinking poetic have to widen to include within itself to irrationalism, not configured as a non-thought, but as a thought other [8] . As we see the art in general and in particular surrealism [9] have an important life now, all you need is a rethinking of terminology, not a funeral. In another vein, the question raised by Saldaña, "advises a variety of ways that poetry has to dispense with the canon and appreciate their unique specificities of the sum of their differences" (p. 19), the answer is Paradoxically, when you accumulate a number of singularities, the result is a canon . Call it the result of "Anthology", "reading list" or "authors you consider relevant," the canon is always the result of a distillation of singularities. It is true that the canon is another term that would be redefined to avoid confusion with certain narrow views that have become popular in recent decades.
This book by Alfredo Saldaña, who actually crown nearly fifteen years of studies of this issue by the author (either through general overviews or specific approaches to poetry) is an indispensable contribution to literature, from now on, study English postmodern poetry has to start (whether to agree with their ideas, either to refute) of No all is surface by the strong case of the theoretical framework and the definition of postmodern, and the rigor of the concrete implementation with the then particularized the premises set forth above. Indeed, as the author himself points out, studies that touch on the subject tend to do so superficial (p. 103), with this trend, and ignoring the essay title, Saldaña has shown that there is much to scratch, much deeper, apparently on the thin shell of the postmodern, and that deep, hidden behind stacks of paper anachronistic criticism, criticism and poetry petty standardized postmodern poetry was worth revisiting .
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[Relationship with the author reviewed: poor and letters, but cordial. Relation to the editorial: none]
[1] Review published under the title of "Surveys" on Literature Review CSIC, vol. 72, n. 144 (2010).
[2] M. del Pilar Lozano Mijares, The English novel postmodern , Arco Books, Madrid, 2007, p. 112.
[3] G. Labrador, Lyrics seized. Poetry and chemistry in the transition English, Becoming, Madrid, 2009, p. 450.
[4] T. Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism , Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey, 1996, p. 132.
[5] Roger Bartra, liquid culture, Katz Editors / CCCB, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2004, p. 9.
[6] Agustín Fernández Mallo, Postpoesía. Towards a new paradigm , Anagram, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2009, p. 55
[7] G. Guerrero, "The rout. Or why there is no Latin American literature, "Letras Libres , No. 93, June 2009, pp. 24-29.
[8] M. Married, "Notes from abroad: poetry and thought," I reality, Ediciones Universidad de Oviedo, Publications Service, Oviedo, 2006, pp. 20ss.
[9] See our "irrational Dictionary surreal," Chimera No 304, March 2009, pp. 51-55.
