From the Ruins of Empire

Most studies that consider the heterogeneous nature of Hispanic cultures outside of Spain focus on Latin America. Nevertheless, the breath of Hispanic cultures covers Africa as well. This work undertakes a transatlantic study of writings by Donato Ndongo (Equatorial Guinea), Mayra Montero (Cuba and Puerto Rico), and Luis Goytisolo (Spain). It underscores the kind of post-colonial criticism that subverts Eurocentric discourses of power-as manifested in religious, scientific, and economic contexts-not merely by outright rejection but by engagement, coercion, and appropriation. We argue that the encounter between the European and the African was not a mere overpowering of one culture by another. The process of engagement, negotiation, and signification that invariably arose produced some very subtle modes of resistance. It is this very subtle mode of resistance to discourses and practices of power, which we define as "composite post-colonialism", and its effectiveness as a tool for subversion that we bring to the forefront in the texts we study.