Just Countryside
Barbara Burns talks to Peter Haysom-Rodríguez, whose book Regionalisms and Resistance in the Twentieth-Century Portuguese Novel: Spatialized Ideologies recently appeared in Legenda’s Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures series.
BB. Congratulations on your new volume on Portuguese regional novels. Your book offers important insights into geographical tensions and identity politics in rural areas of a European country that many of us do not know terribly well. How would you describe the focus and broader relevance of your study to someone unfamiliar with Portugal and Portuguese literature?
PH-R. Thank you. This is a book about how tensions between Portugal’s constituent ‘regions’ or ‘provinces’ are not only geographical concerns, but are often about something else, politically speaking. Beneath the surface of complaints from the ‘periphery’ against the ‘centre’ (often viewed to be the national capital) lurk deeper ideological questions related to class, gender, religion and ethnic (or even racial) marginalisation.
There is no set formula for this relationship, but what I hope I’ve demonstrated is how expressions of regional identity clearly overlap with seemingly unrelated ideological messages. In my view, this dynamic is richer and more complex in literary fiction (twentieth-century novels), than in party-political doctrine and propaganda materials, although the rise of populist ruralisms in contemporary Portugal is a key reason why this question is relevant and urgent.
BB. Your book is structured around ‘case studies’. In what ways does this framework help you to explore the topic?
PH-R. The first chapter gives an historical overview of the topic (in both political and literary terms), and chapters two to four can be called ‘case studies’ in that they comprise close analysis of individual novels published throughout the twentieth century. While there are similarities and patterns across these four authors’ political use of regional space, I draw distinctions between their approaches and the ideological messages that they espouse (which, in some cases, are somewhat complicated).
Through these readings, I have tried to demonstrate the importance of questioning and deconstructing discourses that claim, ‘the capital doesn’t care about people like us’, ‘the big cities get all the money, and we get nothing’, or, in this case, ‘Portugal is Lisbon, and the rest is just countryside’. Although these refrains date back to the nineteenth century, they have developed over the decades and successive regimes (monarchy; nascent Republic; dictatorship; revolution; neo-liberal democracy).
BB. How does your study resonate with strategic political notions today, such as ‘levelling up’ in the UK, and reaching out to ‘left behind’ rural communities in the US?
PH-R. I would say that shifts to the radical right in several European nations (and the USA) over recent years are strongly related to regional grievances and provincial revolts. Various iterations of the same ‘cosmopolitan liberal elite’ stereotype have been exported and repackaged to suit specific geographical contexts, as shown by numerous case studies: the gradual rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Front/National Rally in de-industrialised departments of North-Eastern France; the 2019 success of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in so-called ‘Red Wall’ towns of Northern England; Donald Trump’s outsized support in US Presidential Elections from formerly bustling towns and ‘left behind’ rural communities.
Of particular concern in Portugal is the sudden success of Chega [Enough], a new far-right party that has enjoyed backing from the formerly Communist-supporting, southeastern hinterlands of the Alentejo, amongst other marginal rural areas. This is not an exclusively right-wing trend, but politicians and decision-makers who fail to engage with tractor protests on their doorsteps are perhaps playing a dangerous game.
Despite the simplistic slogans and agendas of ‘levelling up’ in the UK and supporting ‘o interior’ [the interior] in Portugal, a cohesive agenda for tackling regional inequalities and the relative dominance of capital cities still remains to be seen in most cases. We can begin, however, by addressing the social and ideological complexities articulated in works of culture like novels, which develop substantial narratives and allow sustained political allegories and regional imageries to surface.
BB. How did your interest in Portuguese regional literature develop? Have you spent time in any of the less affluent areas away from Lisbon or the prosperous coastal resorts?
PH-R. This started and ended as a very personal project: I have never lived in a capital city, and am very proud to be a Devonian (it was here that I first experienced these capital-province grievances). I spent most of my undergraduate Year Abroad in a modestly sized Portuguese town (Tomar), and I subsequently lived for almost three years in the proud northern city of Porto. I have always been more comfortable in a small-town atmosphere, and, when in Portugal, I love discovering the most peripheral communities imaginable (even when it takes four hours or more on a local bus!). The Portuguese literature I read at this time told stories of marginal communities – although not necessarily victimised ones – and my research began to revolve around interrogating these preconceptions.
BB. Has this research project surprised you or changed your understanding of the topic?
PH-R. The most surprising realisation for me was that rural decline, in Portugal or elsewhere, is not inevitable or absolute; that this nostalgic notion is often co-opted or weaponised by competing political agents. It is a discourse that somehow never completely rings true, and it has helped to re-shape my perspective (and my politics) with regards to regional communities.
The close readings of these case studies were a revelation to me; it was hugely entertaining to see how far I could take the double meanings of linguistic tropes, stock phrases and landscape descriptions. This exercise helped me to understand provincial, geographically peripheral identities in a whole new light.
BB. In the book you focus on novels by four twentieth-century writers, two men (Aquilino Ribeiro and José Saramago, the latter a Nobel laureate), and two women (Agustina Bessa-Luís and Lídia Jorge). Which factors were important in making this selection, and to what extent do you think their individual narratives express a collective experience?
PH-R. For better or for worse, all four of these authors occupy a position in the Portuguese literary ‘canon’, but I was not particularly driven by this. The rationale for selecting these writers was based on specific novels where ‘regional dynamics’ appear, not necessarily on their work as a whole. That said, the fact that these authors espouse distinct ideological outlooks was key.
Although José Saramago’s literature is generally viewed through the lens of his Communist Party membership, I wanted to explore another ‘axis’ (a geographical one) to his novels’ ideological messaging. The other authors are somewhat more idiosyncratic in their views: Aquilino Ribeiro, for instance, appears sceptical of radical political projects, and often articulates viewpoints that can be read as ‘conservative’ and/or ‘nostalgic’. Agustina Bessa-Luís and Lídia Jorge certainly contest patriarchal restrictions through their representations of ‘regional women’, but their positions are difficult to categorise, resisting a conventional ‘feminist’ reading. Together, these novels display a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints as well as geographical areas of continental Portugal, thereby demonstrating how complex and multifaceted ‘regional resistances’ can be.
BB. Is there a work in English translation by one of these writers that you would recommend as offering a good read and an accessible introduction to your theme?
PH-R. I would heartily recommend Margaret Jull Costa’s translations of Saramago’s novels: she did a particularly impressive job with his epic Raised from the Ground, with beautiful Alentejan imagery and useful footnotes. She has also recently published an outstanding English version of Lídia Jorge’s The Wind Whistling in the Cranes.
Aquilino Ribeiro’s literature has had very few English versions, with the exception of Patricia McGowan Pinheiro’s rendering of When the Wolves Howl. This is a useful introduction to his work, but it’s a little dated now, has some errors and is heavily abridged, so read with caution. Agustina Bessa-Luís’s fiction has had translations into French, German and other languages, but not into English.
BB. You mention in your Introduction that during this research project you’ve had to contend with surgery and chemotherapy, and I understand that your recent experience has led to an interest in Medical Humanities, with a particular focus on portrayals of cancer in Lusophone culture. In what ways do you think your personal journey illuminates and nuances your studies in this field?
PH-R. As I was completing my PhD thesis on which this present book is based, I was diagnosed and treated for testicular cancer, involving two lots of surgery and three cycles of chemotherapy (a big shout out to everyone who helped me through this). As a result, I was inspired to radically change my research direction, from ‘Portuguese regional literature’ to representations of cancer in Lusophone cinema and poetry, which I am now examining under the working title ‘An Aesthetic of Malignance’. A strange segue? Perhaps. But both these projects have required some introspection and awareness of one’s positionality. That second-wave feminist maxim, ‘the personal is political’, has never stopped being true for me.
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