Transatlantic transactions: writing hispanism at the centennial of 1892

This dissertation analyzes the emergence of Hispanist discourse surrounding the celebrations of the Fourth Centennial of the ???Discovery??? in Spain in 1892. These celebrations became the first moment after the independence of continental Latin America in which intellectuals from both sides of the Atlantic revisited their common history and articulated a transatlantic Hispanic identity based on shared language, race and ???spirit.??? Hispanism offered them an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon and French modernities from which they were excluded as peripheral not-yet-modern nations. Both Latin American and Spanish authors implemented the myth of Hispanic anti-materialist spirituality to paradoxically reinforce transatlantic commercial exchange. Latin American authors imagined themselves as more modern than Spain, but Hispanic identity provided a white genealogy and the promise of a common economic front. Spanish intellectuals, on the other hand, sought to regain cultural authority and so capture the profits of the Latin American markets. In spite of convergence over the "Hispanic" as a strategic identity with which to claim modernity, intellectuals did not produce a homogeneous discourse, but constructed multiple and conflicting interpretations of the Hispanic bond, deployed by each author in their own nation-building projects. Transnational identity became subordinated to national interests and ultimately would turn into an ideological battleground in the definition of cultural and economic power relations between the former colonies and the ex-metropole. The writings of Hispanism are an ideal point of access for reconsidering issues of postcoloniality, neocolonialism, and internal colonialism from the unique vantage point of transatlantic relations between Spain and Latin America