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Nepantla, Cross-cultural Encounters, and Literature: Latin America, India, Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Michael Palencia-Roth
Michael Palencia-Roth*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, USA Reitaku University, Japan
*
Michael Palencia-Roth, University of Illinois, 3072 Foreign Languages Building, MC-160, 707 S. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Email: palencia@illinois.edu
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Abstract

This essay briefly explores the phenomenon of nepantla in three representative cross-cultural encounters, in both initial and later phases: Spain-Latin America, England-India, and the West-Japan. Nepantla is a mode of in-betweenness rooted in the historical encounter between cultures and leading to mediation of various kinds. For Latin America, the essay focuses on Columbus, the Cortés-Moctezuma encounter, the Aztec-Franciscan dialogues of 1524, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. For India, the essay comments on the East India Company, English education in India, Lord Macaulay, Dean Mahomet, Rabindranath Tagore, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, and a number of other writers from the early, mid and late twentieth century. For Japan, the essay considers, first, Japanese reactions to missionary activities in the sixteenth century, then the opening up of Japan in the nineteenth century, the Meiji Restoration and its literature, and in particular authors like Fukuzawa, Sōseki, Endō, Kawabata, and Ōe. The essay argues, finally, that nepantla is a useful and dynamic approach to intercultural encounters that complements approaches indicated by terms like colonialism, imperialism, contact zones, hybridity or métissage, liminality, de-colonization, or post-coloniality.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 64 , Issue 1-2: Global Ethics , February 2017 , pp. 90 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2016

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