In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, the sociologist Erving Goffman (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963) discusses the relationship between individuals who possess a social stigma and the  normals  (8). Reginald Daniel\u27s new book, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist, discusses the stigmatized identity of the most celebrated Brazilian novelist as perceived in his literary work. Machado\u27s biography is traced, his work commented on, and we are offered a picture of the Brazilian mulatto writer as a way to understand the inclusion, or lack thereof, of race relations and black identification in his writings

Flannery, Mércia Regina Santana

English

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

University of PennsylvaniaScholarlyCommonsDepartmental Papers (Romance Languages) Department of Romance Languages2014Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and theBrazilian Novelist by G. Reginald Daniel (Review)Mércia Regina Santana FlanneryUniversity of Pennsylvania, merciaf@sas.upenn.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/roml_papersPart of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Latin American LiteratureCommons, Portuguese Literature Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social and CulturalAnthropology Commons, and the Sociology of Culture CommonsThis is a review of Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist by G. Reginald DanielThis paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/roml_papers/5For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.Recommended CitationFlannery, M. (2014). Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist by G. Reginald Daniel (Review). HispanicReview, 82 (1), 116-119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hir.2014.0008Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist by G.Reginald Daniel (Review)AbstractIn Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, the sociologist Erving Goffman (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall, 1963) discusses the relationship between individuals who possess a social stigma and the"normals" (8). Reginald Daniel's new book, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist,discusses the stigmatized identity of the most celebrated Brazilian novelist as perceived in his literary work.Machado's biography is traced, his work commented on, and we are offered a picture of the Brazilian mulattowriter as a way to understand the inclusion, or lack thereof, of race relations and black identification in hiswritings.KeywordsReginald G. Daniel, Machado de Assis, race in literature, identity, stigma, Mércia Santana FlanneryDisciplinesLatin American Languages and Societies | Latin American Literature | Portuguese Literature | Race andEthnicity | Social and Cultural Anthropology | Sociology of CultureCommentsThis is a review of Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist by G. Reginald DanielThis journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/roml_papers/5116 i hispanic review : winter 2014daniel, g. reginald. Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Bra-zilian Novelist. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2012.pp. 338.In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, the sociologist ErvingGoffman (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963) discusses the relationshipbetween individuals who possess a social stigma and the ‘‘normals’’ (8). ReginaldDaniel’s new book, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novel-ist, discusses the stigmatized identity of the most celebrated Brazilian novelist asperceived in his literary work. Machado’s biography is traced, his work commentedon, and we are offered a picture of the Brazilian mulatto writer as a way to under-stand the inclusion, or lack thereof, of race relations and black identification in hiswritings.Having written extensively about Brazil’s racial relations and about Machado,Daniel is delving into known territory, being more than well qualified to takeon the subject. In the introduction, the author comments on the importance ofMachado’s legacy to the Brazilian literary canon, and on this famous author’s‘‘betrayal’’ and his ‘‘racial self-negation’’ (1). From here on, the assumption seemsto be that a mulatto writer should be expected to make his race a topic of hisliterary writings, but we miss the advancement of this line of thought.In the first chapter, Daniel includes a panoramic consideration of Brazil’s racialconfiguration. A recapitulation of the country’s racial makeup and the role ofmiscegenation as an explanation for who Brazilians are as a people is also incorpo-rated. Daniel discusses the Brazilian preference for the white-European phenotype,along with the stigmatization of African ancestry, which foregrounds the ensuinganalysis of Machado’s relationship with his own racial ambiguity.This chapter supplies an interesting account of Brazil, and particularly Rio deJaneiro, during the nineteenth century, the time when Machado wrote and that heused to contextualize most of his novels and short stories. Daniel stresses Brazil’slooking to the outside, especially to Europe (France and England in particular) asa way for the elites to ‘‘reckon with the embarrassing gulf between themselves andthe masses’’ (26). Machado is guilty of the same, having chiseled out his charactersmostly from European models.In chapter two, Daniel reflects on the ‘‘absence’’ of literary voices of Africanancestry in Brazil. He explains this situation through a description of the AfricanBrazilian condition, which worked to ‘‘neutralize’’ those who could have workedas ‘‘mouthpieces in the African Brazilian struggle’’ (35). According to Daniel, thiswas a result of how European Brazilians thought about blackness. Considering thatblackness in Brazil was so ‘‘irreconcilable with social advancement,’’ those whomoved upwards could only be perceived as ‘‘whitened’’ (35). The chapter includesPAGE 116................. 18499$ $CH6 12-16-13 12:01:04 PSreviews j 117a brief account of other Brazilian mulatto writers and the degree to which theyincluded the African Brazilian tradition in their work. For example, Caldas Barbosaused the African Brazilian vernacular in his modinhas and lundus, whereas LimaBarreto ‘‘openly discussed the topic of racism from an African Brazilian point ofview’’ (58).In chapter three, Daniel offers a biographical account of Machado’s life, includ-ing his modest origins in Livramento (born to a Portuguese immigrant mother, awasherwoman and seamstress, and a mulatto house painter), until his death as anacclaimed writer in Laranjeiras. Machado’s transition, the accomplishment of hishard-fought upward mobility, with scant formal education, as he was mostly self-taught, is a reason for praise and part of what is used to compose his portrait as agenius. However, as Daniel indicates, Machado was also condemned for his refusalto discuss racial themes in his works, or, as demonstrated by Jose´ do Patrocı´nio’saccusation, for having ‘‘hated his race’’ (67).What is unclear is how we are meant to believe that Machado was a detractor,in view of what was said thus far in the book about Brazil’s racial relations. WasMachado acting as the majority of Brazilians did—and do—as far as race is con-cerned? Do we expect more of him because of his notoriety? In addition, Danielnotes, citing other scholars, that ‘‘Machado disguised his mulatto facial features bywearing a thick moustache and a beard and that he also wore his hair closelycropped in his late years to enhance this camouflage’’ (72). One cannot help butask whether this is the only explanation for why Machado decided to wear his hairand moustache. Further, isn’t this an example of trying too forcefully to interpretthe author’s conduct?In chapter four, Daniel presents the criticism on relatively unknown works byMachado in which the author shows concern for the institution of slavery.Although he is mostly criticized for not discussing issues concerning the conditionof the black Brazilian man, or for not having referred to himself as a mulatto, theinstitution of slavery was, at times, the subject of Machado’s observations. Indeed,as Daniel shows, Machado included references to slavery and slaves in his works,and wrote, albeit sparsely, about them.One case in point is Machado’s praise, in 1876, for the abolition of slavery in theUnited States (79). Crucially, however, Daniel makes an interesting final commentin this chapter in indicating that Machado’s voice was that of a ‘‘narrator—a for-mer diplomat with a more universal perspective,’’ rather than that of a politicianconcerned with the institution of slavery. It could also be argued that, in someregards, the (short) story ‘‘O caso da vara’’ was that of Machado himself. Althoughthe main character in that story is ‘‘sympathetic’’ and sensitive to slavery, or thecondition of the black man of his time, he was more concerned with his own self.PAGE 117................. 18499$ $CH6 12-16-13 12:01:04 PS118 i hispanic review : winter 2014In chapter five, Daniel approached the relationship between Machado’s charac-ters and his own life experience as a mulatto. The statistics cited in the beginningof the chapter foreground the discussion of Machado’s ‘‘desire not to deny beinga mulatto but to become ‘raceless’ ’’ (119). Of the more than 900 characters in hisworks, there is not a description that allows for a clear indication of their race(101). While Daniel considers Machado’s concern with ‘‘the universal dimensionsof the human psyche and experience,’’ and the fact that his approach to slaveryrevealed his understanding of it as a ‘‘symptom of a larger social order’’ (117), arewe still discussing his desire to become ‘‘raceless’’?Indeed, perhaps Daniel could have stated earlier that Machado’s work wasinfluenced by the Realism-Naturalism aesthetic, and thus the elusiveness of theblack victimized character could be illuminated. This highlights another importantquestion whose answer could, possibly, summarize the entire book: was Machadoavoiding engagement in the discussion of slavery as a way to hide his own stigma-tized identity, or rather, was his so-called detachment part of his performance asan analyst of social maladies?Chapter six shifts from Machado’s preference for the inclusion of the ‘‘object Xsubject’’ duality aspects of human character (135), to a consideration of Brazilianlusotropicalismo, in the figure of its most famous articulator, Gilberto Freyre (143),and affirmative action in Brazil (149). The chapter concludes with an acknowledge-ment that Machado’s was a ‘‘moderate Afrocentric’’ perspective. He was ‘‘AfricanBrazilian,’’ but also of ‘‘European descent,’’ and attempted to ‘‘transcend his black-ness in response to Brazil’s racial constraints’’ (152). The question then becomes,wasn’t Machado’s conduct and approach to his racial identity similar, if not equal,to that of most Brazilians from a mixed background?In chapter seven, Daniel proposes a discussion of Machado’s literature againstthe background of the criticism that he did not write an authentically Braziliannarrative. Some of Machado’s critics accused him of an ‘‘artificial attempt’’ toimitate the ‘‘humor of the eighteenth century English novel’’ (154). However, asDaniel shows, Machado was a Brazilian and a carioca, author of a literature that,despite borrowing from the universal European exemplars, was ‘‘uniquely Brazil-ian’’ (158).Chapters eight and nine deal more specifically with the aesthetics to whichMachado subscribed. Daniel traces a characterization of Impressionism, Realism-Naturalism and Romanticism, describing the aspects by which Machado’s charac-ters, narrative structure, point of view, and setting are perceived to oscillate fromaesthetic to aesthetic in ways that seem to parallel the ‘‘mulatto experience’’ (210).Daniel argues that Machado’s Romantic-Realist characters possess ‘‘conflictingsentiments’’ and that they are constantly faced with situations in which they are‘‘judged’’ not by their moral traits alone, but ‘‘by the cut of their clothes, theirPAGE 118................. 18499$ $CH6 12-16-13 12:01:05 PSreviews j 119family name, and their material wealth’’ (218). Although these characters are notvictims of their social circumstances, they victimize themselves through their pur-suit of ‘‘genuine love.’’ This discussion highlights an emphasis throughout thebook on Machado’s personal life in its connections to his work. More specifically,as Daniel concludes in his epilogue, Machado’s life and work ‘‘represent both atriumph over’’ many of the social constraints on Brazilians of African descent, and‘‘a contribution to the struggle of racial equality’’ (253).The book makes an interesting contribution to the study of the great Braziliannovelist, highlighting his personal life struggles, and aesthetics, as a way to under-stand why, or if, he avoided race. At times, however, it is not possible to seebeyond the proposed ambiguity of Machado, and whether he was, on one hand,an ambitious mulatto writer who may have despised his background, or a greatwriter attempting to aim at the universal. Or perhaps both.me´rcia santana flanneryUniversity of Pennsylvaniarogers, charlotte. Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine inTwentieth Century Tropical Narratives. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2012. ix 234 pp.Environmental determinism arose in Latin America particularly during the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries when positivism was in vogue and whenLatin American nations thirsted for their own exceptional claims to rooted identi-ties in native soils. Regionalism’s deep ties to place, to geographical and climaticspecificity, became the paradoxically modern claim to identity and nationhood.The tropical regions inspired particular fascination because of their radical depar-ture from the environmental norms of European and imperial points of reference.They were the spaces where extravagant and violent nature broke the will of colo-nialism and where the regionalist novelist could offer diagnosis and, perhaps byimplication, a cure for national ills.Charlotte Rogers’s excellent study of tropical narratives is not exclusivelyfocused on Latin America, but its essential import remains within the sphere ofLatin American Studies, and more specifically within this particular modern turntoward the land. Its originality lies in its comparativism, drawing on readings ofJoseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Andre´ Malraux’s The Way of the Kings thatare offered as context for understanding the rise and function of discourses aboutmedicine and madness in Latin American novelas de la selva. In addition to indi-vidual chapters devoted to these two novels, she also devotes chapters to JosePAGE 119................. 18499$ $CH6 12-16-13 12:01:05 PS

Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist by G. Reginald Daniel (Review)

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