Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness: A Postmodern Perspective

Author(s): ANTONIO BENÍTEZ-ROJO

Source: Cuban Studies , 1988, Vol. 18 (1988), pp. 125-132
Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24486958

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ANTONIO BENÎTEZ-ROJO

Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness:

A Postmodern Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article claims that Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azuc

nando Ortiz presents a Caribbean response to the question of post
After demonstrating that Ortiz deliberately rejected a dialectical
order to speak of Cubanness through tobacco/sugar relations, this
out that in the framework set forth by Ortiz, the rumba, carnival
rituals, theater, and poetry all appear as modes for acquiring and
ing knowledge. The introduction of that poetic element is precis
characterizes Caribbean postmodernity.

RESUMEN

Este articulo argumenta que Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el a

Fernando Ortiz constituye una respuesta caribena a la cuestiôn
modernidad. Luego de demostrar que Ortiz deliberadamente rechaz
foque dialéctico con el fin de hablar de cubanidad mediante las
tabaco/azucar, el articulo sefiala que en el marco desarrollado por O
rumba, el carnaval, los rituales afro-cubanos, el teatro y la poesia a
como modos de adquirir y comunicar conocimiento. La introducciô
elemento poético es precisamente lo que caracteriza a la post-m
caribena.

In one of his last interviews, Fernand Braudel was asked what differ
ences he saw between the concepts of interdisciplinarity and intersci
ence. Braudel responded: "L'interdisciplinarité c'est le mariage légal de
deux sciences voisines. Moi, je suis pour la promiscuité généralisée. I
believe that Braudel's answer is not only in keeping with his work, and
with the approach of the so-called "nouvelle histoire," but also with the
multidisciplinary pluralism currently observed in the works of well
known humanists and scientists.
This kind of analytical approach, in which observations common to
the most varied disciplines intervene, is quite characteristic of the
present era. It is becoming increasingly difficult to accept, in their
entirety and without skepticism, the postulates of any one discipline,
125

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126 Antonio Benîtez Rojo

especially in terms of its legitimacy for studying a given ph

its own. If, for example, we wish to study the relations
tion owners and slaves in some part of the Caribbean, it
that we shouldn't limit our analysis by using a strictly
nomenclature that alone would no longer suffice to study th
of those relations. We would also have to resort to supp
bularies suitable to the study of those spaces occupied by
ity, power, knowledge, and culture, and from perspecti
that they would range from psychoanalysis to feminism
literary theory to history.
We are entering an era that has begun to be called post
industrial, postideological, or simply the era of the
considering the agricultural and industrial revolutions as
changes previously experienced by humanity. If we exam
definition, we see that postmodernity stems from its r
cepting the discourse of any discipline as legitimate, sinc
legitimacy rests upon the arbitrary act of accepting as it
"center" or "origin" any one of the great narratives of th
"the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, th
of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wea
course, those fables, in turn, must base their legitim
principles of "truth" and "justice" which we hesitate
absolutes, but rather as the product of skillful manipul
postmodernity is presented as an attitude divorced from
therefore, from prophetic destinations, an attitude that reje
ics and scatological categories. In postmodernity, there ca
single truth, but rather many small, practical, and mome
truths without origins or destinations, shifting truths, p
provisional truths.
Now then, assuming that we accept that the industrial r
not solved the problems of the West, the East, and the Third
the ideologies offered as universal remedies or infallible
leave much to be desired when one attempts to apply the
such as "good," "unity," "positive,"and "justice" do notex
themselves; that science, and even mathematics, have mu
with language and that history is much more literature t
else; assuming, finally, that we choose to live in a postm
sion—assuming all this, for what reasons and according t
are we to observe and arrive at conclusions about any gi
non taking place in the Caribbean, an archipelago th
reached modernity?
I am not certain whether this preamble is necessary

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 Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness : 127

consider Fernando Ortiz's Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azxicar

(The Cuban Counterpoint of Tobacco and Sugar), but it happens that
the book presents a Caribbean response to the question of postmodern
ity. In any case, if the reader were to reject Ortiz's position—a position
that I shall analyze shortly—that reader would not be alone. For exam
ple, in the critical bibliography included in the second edition of El
ingenio (The Sugarmill), Manuel Moreno Fraginals says the following
about Ortiz's book: "Many of his observations are brilliant and sugges
tive; other can not withstand the slightest critical analysis."3 Of course,
Moreno Fraginals is speaking from his position as a socioeconomic
historian of sugar, which implies a scientific as well as an ideological
truth. Those of Ortiz's observations that suit those truths are "brilliant
and suggestive"; those that do not are incapable of resisting "the slight
est critical analysis." This is the typical judgment of a modern social
scientist; the judgment of a specialized, authorized, and legitimized
voice. I say this with no irony intended; we all realize that El ingenio is
one of the most fascinating books produced by the literature of sugar.
But surely, so is Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar, especially
if it is not read exclusively as a socioeconomic study of tobacco and
sugar, but rather as a text dealing with Cubanness.
Naturally, it is impossible to undertake here a detailed analysis of
Ortiz's book, so I will limit myself to commenting briefly on some of its
traits, particularly those allowing for a postmodern reading. Perhaps the
first thing about the book that catches one's attention is its table of
contents. It has what appear to be two parts. One is titled exactly like the
book (The Cuban Counterpoint of Tobacco and Sugar), and the other
"Transculturaciôn del tabaco habano e inicios del azucar y de la escla
vitud de negros en América" (Transculturation of the Cigar and Begin
nings of Sugar and of Black Slavery in America).4 The second part
consists of twenty-five chapters, the first of which is entitled "Del
'contrapunteo' y de sus capitulos complementarios" (On the "Cuban
Counterpoint" and its Complementary Chapters). Upon reading this
first chapter, which offers certain explanations of the work, we immedi
ately ask why it wasn't placed at the beginning of the book, following
Bronislaw Malinowski's introduction and as a kind of author's preface.
We do not know what Ortiz would have replied, but one must conclude
that for him any judgment the author may pass upon his work, even if
only explanatory, should be read as yet another chapter of the book, and
not as an a posteriori, corrective, even repressive text bearing the
author's name or signed with just his initials or simply "The Author."
Ortiz's decision to place his opinions on his work within the text of his
work, and not in a note or a preface, points to several characteristics of

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128 : Antonio Benîtez Rojo

postmodern literary theory. One of these is the belief tha

reason for establishing a hierarchical relationship between
texts—a belief to which Ortiz seems to adhere when he includes this
unique chapter within the same category as chapter 6, which deals with
tobacco and cancer, or chapter 24, titled "De la remolacha enemiga"
(The Enemy Beet). Another characteristic of postmodern literary the
ory is to demythologize the concept of author, to erase the halo of
creator with which he or she is perceived by modern criticism. For the
critic studying the literary process from a postmodern perspective, far
from being a creator of words and worlds, the author is a kind of
technician whose trade is controlled by a preexisting practice or textual
discourse; the author is simply a writer. If such an opinion were held,
then a preface or author's note would lack sufficient author-ity to
warrant a separate space from the work written by the author, and,
therefore, an explanation could well appear as another chapter in the
book.
But let us see just what type of explanation appears in that first
complementary chapter:

Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar is an essay of schematic character.

It does not attempt to treat the subject exhaustively, nor does it pretend that the
economic, social and historical counterpositions pointed out between both
products of Cuban industry are all as absolute and clear-cut as they are often
presented in contrast. Socioeconomic phenomena are quite complex in their
historical evolution, and the multiple factors which determine them make them
vary widely in their trajectories, at times drawing them together due to their
similarities, as if they belonged to the same order, and at times separating them
due to their differences, until they appear antithetical. At any rate, essentially
the contrasts remain just as they have been pointed out.5

In my reading of this paragraph, I observe, first of all, that Contra

punteo cubano del azucar y el tabaco is not presented as a work which
has achieved its goal, but rather as a vehicle conscious of its insuffi
ciency, which "does not attempt to treat the subject exhaustively." In
other words, this is a text with no final destination that does not pretend
to arrive at the truth. Moreover, it is a text that is conscious of itself and
informs us that what we may interpret as truths are, rather, arbitrary
decisions employed for the sake of establishing the strategy of the
discourse. That strategy—we read—consists of rendering "absolute
and clear-cut" the "economic, social and historical counterpositions"
between tobacco and sugar, when, in fact, they are not so to that extent.
That brings us to what constitutes the heart of postmodern literary

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 Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness : 129

analysis: the questioning of the concept of "unity" and the disassem

bling, or rather unmasking, of the mechanism known as binary opposi
tion which, to a greater or lesser degree, supports the philosophical and
ideological structures of modernity. According to what we read here,
those concepts are mere appearances, adopted in their "historical evolu
tion" by socioeconomic phenomena. Indeed, these may be interrelated
because of their similarities, "as if they belonged to the same order," or
they may be separated "due to their differences, until they appear
antithetical." And that relativism is possible thanks to the "multiple
factors" intervening in the formation of said phenomena. Thus, binary
opposition is not a law, but rather a strategy of the discourse, since the
respective unities of the poles in conflict are not only apparent, but also
subverted by the presence of multiple factors—that is, by differences.
Finally, I examine the sentence "At any rate, essentially the contrasts
remain just as they have been pointed out." This is, indeed, a blunt and
straightforward statement that quite precisely defines the limits of post
modern analysis: nevertheless, in order to establish the postmodern
point of view, one needs analogies and oppositions. Therefore, there is
no alternative but to retain them, even if no longer as truths, but rather as
options with a strategic value that may be construed as yet another
example of the infinite interplay of possibilities.
Finally, to conclude with this unique chapter, I should like to point
out that the four-hundred-odd pages constituting the twenty-five com
plementary chapters are, as Ortiz tells us, footnotes to the eighty pages
of his essay. That, of course, is a serious textual transgression even
within the most tolerant limits of socioeconomic discourse, and draws
Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar ever closer to the discourse
of the novel.
Let us now take a quick glance at Ortiz's text. To begin with, it does
not seek its legitimacy in the discourse of the social sciences, but rather
in that of literature, of poetry, to be exact. One must bear in mind that
the text is based upon the controversy between Don Carnal and Dona
Quaresma—allegories of Carnival and Lent—which we read about in
Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love). After briefly
describing that fourteenth-century work in his first paragraph, Ortiz
declares:

Perhaps the famous controversy imagined by that great poet [Ruiz] is the
literary antecedent that now allows us to personify black tobacco and fair
skinned sugar, and make them appear in this fable narrating their contradic
tions.6

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 130 Antonio Benîtez Rojo

Further on, he adds:

But, moreover, the contrasting parallelism of tobacco and sugar

. . . that it goes beyond merely social perspectives, reaching th
poetry. . . . After all, that dialogistic genre that applies the dial
dramatic art was always typical of the naive muses of the peo
music, dance, song and theater. Let us remember its most florid
in Cuba in the antiphonal praises of the liturgy, both by whites
the erotic and danced controversy of the rumba, and in the ver
points of country peasants and Afro-Cuban dandies.7

Those, then, are the promiscuous origins of Contrapunte

tabaco y el azùcar: Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor (quote
throughout the text), the antiphonal rituals of the Catho
Cuban liturgies, music in general and the ' 'rumba" in parti
songs, popular theater, and, of course, the social sciences
over, the text is not presented as a monologistic, patriarch
centric narrative, but rather as a dialogic and acentric fa
plurality of voices and rhythms one may perceive the mo
ciplines and the most irreconcilable ideologies. I would say
above all, a pagan text—pagan in the same fashion as the
bisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje (Kimbisa Order of the
of the Safe Journey). This is a Cuban cult founded in the
that accepts Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Catholi
without relegating to inferior positions the nganga of th
"nkisi"ofthe Abakuâorthe "orisha"ofthe Lucumi. Or it is
fashion of the Shango cult, born on the island of Trinida
more than sixty gods, or great spirits, cdMtàpowers by its bel
of these, over thirty may be identified with African deiti
ruba; about twenty are of Catholic origin, that is, hagiogr
—Samedona, Bogoyana, and Vigoyana—are of Indo-Americ
having reached Trinidad through the Guianas; two others
Mahabil—were brought to the island by indentured servant
and one, called Wong Ka, comes from China. Moreover, in
cult there are also elements derived from the Baptist chur
European witchcraft.
I have the impression that this transgressive and highly
space is precisely what, according to the modern perspect
withstand the slightest critical analysis." And yet, as I see
is the most representative of Cubanness, of Caribbeannes
tural sense of the term.
Returning to Ortiz's book, it is evident that the presence of tobacco
and sugar in the text does not refer exclusively to those products in the

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 Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness : 131

narrow sense of the word. Tobacco and sugar possess a metaphoric

value that applies to blacks and whites, to slaves and plantation owners,
to art and technology, to small rural holdings and large estates, to
national and foreign capital, to independence and dependence, to agri
cultural and industrial diversification as opposed to single-crop and
single-product economies, to sovereignty and foreign intervention, to
free labor and slave labor, to the discourse of resistance and the dis
course of power, to desire and repression. And all of that, together, is
Cubanness, Caribbeanness. Tobacco is the carnival, the celebration,
the dancing, the drum, the giddiness, sensuality; it is the reign of Don
Carnal in Libro de buen amor, the sphere of art, imagination, and all that
is poetic. On the other hand, sugar alludes to logos, the law, theoretical
knowledge, discipline, and punishment; it is the domain of Lent, of
production and ideology; it is the space offered as the center, the origin,
the destination. And yet, Cubanness is not constituted by sugar alone,
nor by tobacco, but rather by the counterpoise of tobacco and sugar.
Now, it is interesting to note how Ortiz avoids the idea of a binary
opposition between the referent fields allegorized through tobacco and
sugar. To begin with, he uses the term counterpoint, which returns us to
baroque music—that is, to a sonorous architecture of excessive and
acentric character. More concretely, he refers us to a musical form in
which the voices do not oppose each other in terms of binary opposition,
but rather unfurl in parallel fashion in perpetual evasion, each one
progressing under the provocative impulse of the other. Hence the
denomination offugue given to the most representative genre of baroque
music. Ortiz refers to this dialogic form in terms of parallel counterposi
tion, not of opposition.
I suppose that a postmodern philosopher—I am, of course, referring
to an intellectual educated in Europe or in the United States—would
have no objection to accepting this curious form that rejects binary
opposition and establishes a kind of coexistence. And, of course, he
would be highly impressed by Ortiz's show of ideological and multi
disciplinary promiscuity when speaking about Cubanness. What is
more, he would be quite pleased with Ortiz's critical attitude toward
machinery; it is a typically postmodern attitude in the sense that it does
not seek a lost paradise in a mythical era of the preindustrial past, but
rather limits itself to pointing out the monotony and flatness inherent in
industrial pragmatism, both in relation to Western capitalism and Soviet
socialism. Lastly, I believe that the contingent postmodern philosopher
we have alluded to would approve Ortiz's final gesture of naming
alcohol the resulting sound (or metaphor) of this Cuban counterpoint,
since alcohol can not be taken as a possible synthesis of tobacco and

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 132 : Antonio Benîtez Rojo

sugar but rather as a signifier whose ' 'excessiveness" provid

for both voices to perform their parts. But at the same time, I
philosopher would be puzzled by a perspective not envis
arguments. This is that in the framework of "generalized p
set forth by Ortiz, Afro-Cuban beliefs, along with the "rum
carnival, should appear as forms of knowledge as valid as t
mon to theoretical knowledge. The introduction of that poet
so familiar to us Antilleans, is precisely what would charac
modernity seen from a Caribbean viewpoint.

NOTES

This article, translated by Jaime Martinez-Tolentino, was presented at the

ence on Caribbean Culture and Identity, Woodrow Wilson International Cent
ington, D.C., March 1987.

1. François Ewald and Jean-Jacques Brochier, "Une vie pour l'histoire," M

Littéraire 212 (1984): 22.
2. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Kno
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. xxiii-xxv.
3. "Muchas de sus observaciones son brillantes y sugerentes; otras mu
resisten el menor anâlisis critico" (Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio (
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978], 3:246).
4. Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar (1940; rpt. C
Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1978).
5. "El Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar es un ensayo de carâcte
mâtico. No trata de agotar el tema, ni pretende que las senaladas contrap
econômicas, sociales e histôricas entre ambos productos de la industrie cuba
tan absolutas y tajadas como a veces se presentan en el contraste. Los fenome
nômico-sociales son harto complejos en su evoluciôn histôrica y los multiples
que los determinan los hacen variar grandemente en sus trayectorias, ora acerc
entre si por sus semejanzas como si fuesen de un mismo orden, ora separândolos
diferencias hasta hacerlos parecer como antitéticos. De todos modos, en lo susta
mantienen los contrastes tales como han sido sefialados" (p. 91).
6. "Acaso la célébré controversia imaginada por aquel gran poeta sea pre
literario que ahora nos permitiera personificar el moreno tabaco y la blanconaz
y hacerlos salir en la fabula a referir sus contradicciones" (p. 11).
7. "El contrastante paralelismo del tabaco y el azucar es tan curioso . .
mâs alla de las perspectivas meramente sociales para alcanzar los horizon
poesia. ... Al fin, siempre fue muy propio de las ingenueas musas del pue
poesia, mùsica, danza, canciôn y teatro, ese género dialogistico que lleva hast
dramâtica la dialéctica de la vida. Recordemos en Cuba sus manifestaciones mâs
floridas en las preces antifonarias de las liturgias, asi de blancos como de negros, en la
controversia erotica y danzaria de la rumba y en los contrapunteos versificados de la
guajirada montuna y la curreria affo-cubana" (p. 11-12).

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