On Emerging from Hyper-Nation represents Ronald W. Sousa's attempt to
answer the question, "Why do I smile on reading one of Saramago's
'historical' novels?" Why that reaction of emotional release? To answer
the "smile question" the book engages in a critical mode that could be
described as "discourse analysis." It combines several critical strains
and relies on basic concepts from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis,
Adlerian psychology, and contemporary cognitive psychology for their
discourse-analytical value rather than as entrées into psychoanalytical
reading per se. The introductory chapter presents some of the concepts
that underlie that compound analytical modality and sets out an overview
of twentieth-century Portuguese social and economic history. Then, with
an eye to answering the "smile question," the book reads Nobel Laureate
José Saramago's three novels, Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), The Year
of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984), and The History of the Siege of
Lisbon (1989). Or, better, it seeks to read Sousa's own reading of the
three works, since focus falls on how each novel seeks to construct both
its own reading and also Sousa as its reader. The discussion brings to
light a number of textual phenomena that bear upon the "smile question."
Among them are that the novels invoke, often subtly, the fascist
hermeneutical heritage remaining from before the revolution of 1974 as a
constituent part of their communication with the reader; that they
summon up historical trauma; that they function as Freudian-style
"tendentious jokes"; and that, through these various invocations, they
seek to constitute a postrevolutionary Portuguese subject. The reading
of Sousa's reading, then, ends up being a reading of some of the
cultural forces at work in postrevolutionary Portugal.
