SOURCE: "Identity and Authenticity in Alejo Carpentier's Reasons of State," in Imagination, Emblems and Expressions: Essays on Latin American, Caribbean, and Continental Culture and Identity, edited by Helen Ryan-Ranson, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993, pp. 75-87.

[In the following essay, Stewart traces the dictator's struggle with identity in Carpentier's Reasons of State.]

Ostensibly Alejo Carpentier's 1974 novel, Reasons of State, concerns itself with the political and military problems and actions of a mythical Latin American dictator who chooses to live in Paris as much as possible. The Head of State, as we know him, embodies nearly absolute power, as near as might be supposed possible in one man. Unsurprisingly political and military activities comprise the assertion of power and authority in this novel and also provide the series of events which propels the narrative forward. Nonetheless, these activities do not define and shape the novel's primary theme of identity; rather, they provide the background against which this topic is shown. Despite the implications of his title, Carpentier has not written a novel whose main enterprise is to examine the effects of power upon the autocrat who is its protagonist; nor has he examined at any length the consequences for the state, polity or population affected by the concentration of power in this one man. Nor yet does the novel concentrate on the mechanics or dynamics of political power in action. Indeed, except at the very basic level of event and fictional context Reasons of State can hardly be said to be an overtly political novel.

If Carpentier's main interest is not in political explorations, then in what is it? Simply put, it is in the Head of State as a letrado [enlightened head] and more importantly, as a Latin American who incorporates a false identity because he rejects his own indigenous identity. Beyond the simply intuitive apprehension that Carpentier's preoccupations (whether or not he is aware of them) are not politically oriented, textual analysis brings us to the same conclusion. Overtly political and military sections of the text pass quickly in that relatively large periods of time are devoted relatively few pages; thus such sections, because they do not demand extended attention and because they are not replete with detail or elaboration of theme, must be relegated to secondary status. Indeed, the most overtly and concentratedly political section of the novel—the section wherein the dictator crushes his erstwhile compatriot Hoffman's rebellion, reconsolidates power and tries to hold on to it in spite of increasingly active opposition—comprises 158 pages yet represents "several years," as we learn from his daughter, Ofelia. On the other hand, ten pages alone are devoted to a visit by the Distinguished Academician, which could not be thought to take more than an hour of the Head of State's time. Such dense sections as this all have as their central significance the question of identity and authentication, and it is upon such scenes that critical enquiry should focus if it wishes to penetrate the heart of the text's meaning. It should also be remarked that even the term used in the above paragraph, concentratedly political, must be taken as relative because even in that middle section, the novel's most overtly political, the theme of identity recurs many times, usually in the form of a "slow" scene or a motif appearing within the texture of the fast-moving political section.

Very early in the novel it becomes clear that the Head of State's chief pleasures are not brought about by the mundane duties of governing: "Happiness due to an empty agenda-tray, on the night-table beside the hammock, instead of a whole timetable of interviews, official visits, presentation of credentials, or ostentatious entry of soldiers…." In fact the Head of State rarely seems to be a man who takes pleasure in the wielding or working of political power, who defines himself by the political and military power he embodies, who desires to exercise that power above all else. To be sure, his violent outbursts upon hearing of each of the rebellions with which he is confronted are based in part upon the betrayal and ingratitude he feels in the rebels. Yet an even larger element of his outrage comes from the fact that he is far from eager to return to his homeland, or, more properly put, to leave Paris. This regret is especially keen at Hoffman's rebellion: "He longed to stay here [in Paris], to get out of the magic circle, but just as if it really enclosed him he could not." The "magic circle" which he so wants to escape here is the Head of State's own conception of his country's history, with which, of course, he is inescapably involved.

What is this Paris which has or represents more attraction to the despot than his own country? The previous quotation seems to suggest that Paris's function in the text is symbolic, but it is so only in a very direct and emblematic way. Paris epitomizes the height of European culture, elegance and civility, but it is conceived differently in the minds of the reader and the dictator. For the Head of State, Paris is all that is marvelous in La Belle Epoque, but it is even more; it is the principal mediator of his desire, the means by which he defines himself. I am using mediator here in the sense put forth by Rene Girard in his model of triangular desire as elaborated in Deceit, Desire and the Novel: "The disciple pursues objects which are determined for him, or at least seem to be determined for him, by [a] model…. We shall call this model the mediator of desire." To discuss an authoritarian dictator as a disciple perhaps presses hard on the reader's credulity or expectations. Certainly the terms and orientation of discussion are far removed from those which are commonly associated with a dictator. Yet this is precisely how the novel asks to be read.

In a salubrious model of desire, no mediator is interposed between the subject and his object of desire so that the desiring subject wishes for the desired object without the "help" of any model he wishes to imitate or impress. The interposition of a mediator necessarily indicates a lack of ability to generate or find autonomous desire, that is, a lack of self-determination and authenticity. As the subject of triangular desire, the Head of State reveals and perpetuates his lack of self-definition and his misguided notions of identity. And, as we shall see, the dictator's lack of identity is also present in the country he governs. What precisely does the dictator desire? Not power, for he has power. Those parts of the text (and they are undeniably important) which treat the Head of State's relationship to power portray him trying to maintain the status quo, not to increase his power. Indeed, there are certain boundaries to and infringements upon his power to which he is content to resign himself, such as the towering presence of the United States as hemispheric giant. Yet no reader can fail to note the authentic, "home-grown" vitality which courses through the dictator prior to his return to quell the uprising of General Ataulfo Galvan:

The Head of State … was pouring himself great swigs of Santa Ines rum—a rum that no longer seemed merely the nostalgic breath of patriotic feelings in laissez-faire Paris, but the rum of battle, hot and strong, foretelling hard rough marches and counter-marches in the near future, the smell of horses, soldier's armpits and gunpowder. And all at once, blotting out Jean-Paul Laurens' blessed Radegonde, Elistir's seascape and Gerome's gladiators, they were in the middle of a Council of War. Forgotten was the adolescent hero of the Arc de Triomphe….

Epitomized here is the sort of exercise of authority which does truly pleasure the dictator. Only in his military endeavors and in his bombastic speech-making do we see him "lose himself" to the moment—a paradoxical, yet true, metaphor in that at such infrequent moments the dictator is most truly himself and hence most genuinely happy.

If the dictator does not try to accumulate power, his desires must lie in another direction. This direction is apparent in the above quotation in the form of the works of art "blotted out" by the dictator's vision of the Council of War. But the works of art do not represent the object of desire; instead they epitomize the mediator of desire which in the fuller and more general form it takes throughout the text might best be called French culture. The real object of the dictator's desire is a sense of meaning, identity and legitimation for his life and activities. To fulfill his desires he repeatedly turns to models of European (particularly French) high culture and away from any models which his own Latin America might provide. In other words, he shuns desires which seem most nearly to arise spontaneously within him, such as those exemplified by the rum in the above quotation. Despite the fact that he had become more his true self during his return home to crush Galvan, upon his subsequent return to Paris, the dictator immediately and happily reimmerses himself in Parisian life, saying to his secretary Peralta: "We're better off here than in the Mummies' Cave," a statement which belies authentic desire and identity. Apparently the symbolic import of these native mummies, accidentally discovered by the Head of State while he briefly camped in their midst, is lost on him. He fails to see them as relics of an indigenous Latin American past. Shortly after this statement, the narrator remarks that the Head of State "[feels] something approaching an organic need to re-establish relations with the city." The language of this assertion at once conveys the depth ("organic") and the inauthenticity ("approaching") of the dictator's mediated desires.

To best understand the Head of State, it must be recalled that he is the leader of a nation which uses European models in its efforts to achieve beauty, culture, respectability or any sort of "improvements": "To make the resort more attractive, the municipality had constructed a cement pier with a casino at the end supported on piles, the whole affair copied from Nice …"; "Surveying instruments transformed flooded regions, waste land and goat pastures, dividing them into a number of marked-out squares, which having been since remote times 'The Lazar's small-holding," 'Mexican farm' or 'Misia Petra's ranch,' suddenly adopted the names of 'Bagatelle,' 'West Side' or 'Armenonville' …" (my italics). Apparently, "sophisticated" citizens share their dictator's desire to replace indigenous ways by importing styles and names, however ludicrous their (mis) application The lamentable irony of this sort of imitation is that the nation has its own particular, often strange (from a European perspective) but rich, beauty and culture, as the novel makes abundantly clear.

Clearly not all the dictator's pretension and lack of self-knowledge can be blamed on him. Nor is this sort of mediated desire peculiar to him, though he exceeds the degree to which desire is mediated in his fellow countrymen because his powerful position enables him to do so. The dictator's own education was dominated by "text's in which more space was occupied—naturally enough—by the Soissons Vase than the battle of Ayacucho, and by Cardinal Balue's cage than the conquest of Peru, and which necessarily laid more stress on Saint Louis of the Crusades than on Simon Bolivar of Carabobo…." As Girard has said, desires may be defined or generated according to "the Other in a movement which is so fundamental and primitive that [characters] completely confuse it with the will to be Oneself." This statement explains why the Head of State's school texts may have appeared "natural enough," but from a less Eurocentric posture, the domination of French history to the detriment of indigenous history could hardly appear more unnatural. As a native citizen of his country, the dictator is naturally in part a product of its self-perceived inferiority; as Head of State, he is in part responsible for the perpetuation of this mind-set.

The Head of State values culture above all else, though not always for mature or disinterested reasons. The relationship between the dictator and culture is impossible to summarize with terse quotations because it is complex and contradictory. On the one hand his pleasure in being asked to attend the Parisian sophisticate Madame Verdurin's musical evenings is surely not entirely grounded in savoring the evening's artistic endeavors. No small measure of his satisfaction stems from the sense of prestige and inclusion in influential European circles which the Head of State desires. The connection between high culture and high places in Paris is a happy one for the dictator. On the other hand, he does make sincere pronouncements about his attitudes toward culture. He is a ruthless tyrant only in the political arena: "Bullets and machetes for bastards. But complete liberty of criticism, polemics, discussion and controversy concerning art, literature, schools of poetry, classical philosophy … the concept of Beauty, and everything else in that line … that's culture."

The depth, and from his own perspective no doubt, the sincerity, of his attachment to French culture as mediator becomes apparent shortly after the dictator learns of the rebellion of Walter Hoffmann and the necessity of once again leaving Paris to reconsolidate his power. At this point, the Head of State conflates his present situation with that of Christ. He takes on several important Christ-like aspects and subsequently remembers the words declared by the Christ in a passion play he had once seen in his own country: "And if you take this from me, what shall I be? What will remain of me?" These words—originally spoken by the passion-play Christ to a distraught spectator who had come out to aid him on his trip to Golgotha—resound in the dictator's memory because he feels deprived of that which he supposes to be his rightful destiny, that is, to live his version of the life of a cultured Parisian. Clearly the dictator sees his own identity as defined not by the functions of state he performs, not by the tremendous power he can yield, nor by his martial abilities, and least of all by the fact of his Latin American heritage and origin, but rather by this interaction with objects and persons who represent French culture and Parisian high society.

Peralta, sensing the thoughts of his patrón, suggests to him that he ought to abandon his duties and remain in his beloved Paris. "And suppose I get rid of all that," the dictator replies, "what should I be? What would remain of me?" We should not suppose that this question reveals the dictator's awareness of, or any sudden awakening to, his genuine (or at least more authentic) identity. Indeed, quite the opposite is happening, as is revealed by the Head of State's next words: "Yes, I remember … thinking about the people who had turned against me because of that business at Nueva Cordoba, so that my personality had dwindled and become too small and helpless to play a part in this Apocalyptic world. I was taking on the Crusade for Latinity in order to reinstate my image." Here the dictator reveals that his feelings of self-worth are not generated from any desire to please his fellow countrymen or other Latinos, let alone from within himself. He hopes to recoup power only in order to regain his status in Paris, in order to become the image of Latinity he feels is required by the mediator, Paris. At this point the dictator has moved as far away from any desire for authentic identity as he will go in the novel. At this moment of potential crisis, he most explicitly states the falseness of his desires.

Later, when all is lost by the dictator in the United-States-backed coup and he is without power, he endures all sorts of ignominy within his own country, bears up under all manner of loss until he is made to think of the fact that he is not included in the Petit Larousse: "And that afternoon I wept. I wept because a dictionary—Je seme a tout vent—was unaware of my existence." Betrayal, utter powerlessness, disrespect for his authority, the hatred of his former polity, none of these break the dictator. Book six ends with him weeping because he will never be validated by French society in the way he has desired all his life.

The fact that the dictator blindly defines himself by European terms is further demonstrated after his first return to Paris when all his former "friends" (that is, his sources of legitimation) except the Academician spurn him. After the publication of the photographs of "that business at Nueva Cordoba" have changed his supposed image from that of the enlightened and encultured autocrat to that of the bloody tyrant, the dictator becomes depressed and angry. Yet instead of examining himself and searching for appropriate means of legitimation, the Head of State cynically turns toward Germanic models which function as no more than replacements for the equally false French models. His notable lack of concern about being a tyrant is, of course, hypocritical and despicable, but what is perhaps more noteworthy is the immediacy with which the dictator turns to another Old World model as a mediator of his desire for identity. The dictator, even here, refuses or is unable to return to his own origins for models of behavior. If he cannot define himself according to Frenchness, he will adopt a Germanic nature—just like that!—and in his eagerness to become Germanic we see too his sudden childish dislike and ill-will for things French. But this should not surprise us, for, as Girard has said, any:

hostility [from the mediator] does not diminish his prestige but instead augments it. The subject is convinced that the model considers himself too superior to accept him as a disciple. The subject is torn between two opposite feelings for his model—the most submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call hatred. Only someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is truly an object of hatred.

The events of Reasons of State clearly fit this pattern. As we have seen, Paris is the model of inspiration for the dictator, and Paris clearly rejects the bloody manifestations of his true self as exhibited at Nueva Cordoba. We have seen elsewhere the dictator's "submissive reverence" in his cynical Crusade for Latinity, and his "intense malice" displays itself as, among other things, the hopeful predictions that France will fare poorly in the war.

The dictator's flirtation with a Germanic identity does not last long, just long enough for the reader to assess the profundity of his lack of autonomous identity. This flirtation does not in fact seriously undercut the role of Paris as mediator. Nonetheless, part of Reasons of State's brilliance lies in its desire to undercut or reverse its own structures. Such undercutting, or the willingness to depict and reveal paradox, however, does not mean that the text eventually fails to assert any consistent meanings. One of the prime examples of such self-undercutting is germane to our discussion, and that is the ability of the Head of State to take his friend the Academician with a grain of salt. As we have seen, the dictator desires identity and authentication and seeks it through the mediator epitomized in the word Paris. The Academician, by virtue of his position and status, ought to serve as an ideal representation of the mediator, but he does not. Just as the dictator is a false image of a Head of State—false because tyrannical, cruel, uninterested in his own people and nation—so is the Academician a spurious image of Old World reason and culture—self-important, chauvinistic, racist, opinionated.

The section wherein the Academician is introduced is the principal one concerning him, and this section is narrated by the dictator. Oddly it is through the Head of State, who is otherwise so blind to his devotion to French models, that the Academician's failures and shortcomings are revealed. He is both the central consciousness and the voice through which the Academician is at once presented and deflated. The dictator is knowing and indulgent. Only the reader, never the Academician, is privy to the dictator's parenthetical criticisms. Often the Head of State keeps his peace rather than contradict the Academician or defend his own people: "I remain silent rather than tell him how …"; "At this point I decide to remain silent…." Later, when all of his other Parisian acquaintances have thrown him over because of the bloody debacle at Nueva Cordoba, only the Academician remains loyal to the dictator. However, the dictator receives little long-term comfort from this fact, although he is temporarily bucked up. At this point the Head of State feels the need for authentication by Paris so strongly that he feels "his strength of mind restored, and his mood made more aggressive by the conversation," but Peralta soon exposes the ignorance and chauvinism of the Academician in a justifiable outburst which restores the dictator's perspective concerning the Academician. Thus the narrator comments near the end of the scene: "And in the sole place in the Universe where other people's opinion had some importance to him, everyone was giving him the cold shoulder." Here, through the use of the word everyone, we see that the Academician is not truly regarded as important by the dictator. They use one another in times of crisis: the Head of State can supply money; the Academician can wield influence in the press.

At the height of the verbal confrontation between Peralta and the Academician, "the President silenced his secretary with an expression of fatigue." Once again the Head of State refuses to truly confront the Academician. These refusals to let that false embodiment of reason be deflated are partly due to the dictator's pragmatic streak, which allows him to recognize a useful ally. The refusal to defend his native land and people from the Academician's ignorant and racist onslaughts does little to endear the dictator to the reader. But more interesting is the fact that the Academician, even so potentially damaging a representative of the idealized, faultless culture of Paris as he, does nothing to dislodge or reshape Paris as the dictator's mediator. The Academician actually undercuts Old World culture: if his position of eminence marks him as a paragon and spokesman within that culture, then surely that culture has some serious flaws. The dictator would appear to ignore these flaws. He cannot afford to do otherwise since serious reflection on the mediator would necessarily involve the dictator in troubling questions about his own identity and about the worthiness and origins of his desire, and these sorts of questions the dictator never confronts. As Girard has said, "The obsessed man astounds us with his clear understanding of those like himself … and in his complete inability to see himself."

If this were a novel primarily concerned with exploring political power or systems, it would be unlikely to devote several pages to the preparation of lunch undertaken by the exiled dictator's live-in, the Mayorala Elmira, in book seven. It would certainly not have as its primary concern, as does Reasons of State, the dictator's movement toward (re) discovery of his authentic self. This last book begins with the epigram, "And deciding not to seek more knowledge than what I could find in myself …" and this is precisely the decision that the dictator makes, whether consciously or not, after his final disillusionment with France.

The adage, "you can't go home again" applies in every way to the overthrown dictator. Obviously he cannot return to his own country—he never even entertains hopes or illusions of doing so—nor is he at home in Paris, the false model through which he has striven to fulfill his desires his entire adult life. The Paris that the dictator returns to after his ouster is not the Paris fixed in his mind before his arrival, and he reacts with astonishment and dismay to the modernist works of art which have replaced the pieces that he had held so dear. His former friends and acquaintances, even his faithful homme, Sylvestre, are either dead or somehow so changed in circumstances (as is he) as to be socially unavailable to him: "I was afraid a princess—or someone with the presumptions of one—would scorn a man who was, after all, only a Latin-American president thrown out of his palace." This particular parenthetical aside concerning Madame Verdurin's possible presumption could never have been made by the Head of State in his previous Paris years because he was so blinded by his desire and self-deceit that he could not see the possibility of falseness in himself nor dare to admit its presence in the mediator. Logically the dynamics of mediated desire suggest that any devalorization of the mediator by the desiring subject would consequently necessitate a devalorization in the object of desire (and the inverse is also true). With an object of desire as vitally important as his very identity and worth, the dictator could not have afforded to ponder his chosen model too carefully, for the ramifications of unworthiness would have been unbearable.

But in his final return to Paris, the deposed tyrant's eyes are opened, and it would be a serious mistake not to recognize the depth of his change. Ironically, the dictator's epiphanic moment occurs in the brothel named Aux glaces, a name which suggests, of course, illusion and distortion, and which is full of prostitutes assuming false identities. But it is here that the dictator, or the Ex as he now prefers to be called, sees a true reflection of himself which he is ready to voice:

Here, looking at what I am looking at, I feel I am witnessing the Arrest of Time…. I am … less of an exiled ruler, or actor in decline, and more identified with my own ego, still possessing eyes for looking, and impulses arising from the depths of vitality that is deliciously stimulated by something worth looking at—riches definitely preferable (I feel therefore I am) to those of a fictitious existence in the stupid ubiquity of a hundred statues in municipal parks, patios and town halls.

"Actor in decline," "fictitious existence," "stupid ubiquity"—the Head of State could never have made these remarks. The Ex Head of State can.

When the Ex speaks of "the Arrest of Time," he is saying more than he realizes. Inside the brothel, the Ex feels a timelessness, and the reader hearkens back to the previously quoted passage wherein the dictator professed his desire to escape time: "He longed to stay here, to get out of the magic circle, but just as if it really enclosed him he could not." As I have said, the magic circle from which the dictator wished to escape was his country's history, his involvement with his own origins. Ironically for him, the Ex does achieve this "timelessness," but he does so precisely when he is actually beginning to embrace his own origins and reject the model of Paris. Of course in one sense he has escaped his country's history in that he no longer wields power or influence there, but in the central sense of the novel, that of identity, he is reintegrated with the authentic aspects of his country's culture.

The word sense is a fortunate word here since it includes the concept of reason (the text's Cartesian component which is rejected finally by the Ex) as well as the signification found in the words sensory and sensual, which best characterize the experiences that lead the Ex back toward his origins ("I feel therefore I am"). The prime example of the Ex's unification with the authentic through the sensual is the Mayorala's meal—which even the ultimate fake and snob, Ofelia, cannot resist partaking in—that occurs shortly after the Ex's epiphanic moment in the brothel. By this time we recognize that food is a sign whereby cultural identity is displayed. Earlier during the campaign to crush Galvan's rebellion, the Head of State and his cronies dine on a medley of foods from Europe and their home country: "sardines, corned beef, baked bananas, dulce de leche and Rhine wine." This ethnic potpourri is matched to the dictator's level of authenticity at that time, and it marks the point when the dictator is most nearly his authentic self until his ultimate exile in Paris. Yet even on this campaign the staples are European, as is the wine with which the meal is washed down. Only the dessert and side-dish are native. This propensity of the dictator's for the food of others, like all his matters of identity, is mirrored by his fellow countrymen's habits during the boom-time coincident with World War I: "while only in Chinese eating houses could one eat the national dishes, now scorned as something connected with rope-soled shoes and ballads sung by the blind." However the Mayorala, whose unpretentiousness has been evident throughout the novel, had already pronounced her opinion of French food in a piece of foreshadowing which occurs long before her accompaniment of the dictator into Parisian exile: "She found a derogatory name for [it] all; the Burgundian snails were 'slugs'; the caviar, 'buckshot in oil'; the truffles, 'chips of charcoal'; the halva, 'nougat trying to be like turron from Jijona.'" Thus, long before the meal in exile, it is clear that in this text man is known by the food he eats, and the significance of the dictator feasting on his native cuisine is clear. Finally, ill in exile, the Ex convalesces on what he calls "a meal of our own sort—pancake, tamale … the only things that seem to me to taste of anything." The Ex's movement toward authentic desire is clearly demonstrated by the foods he chooses to eat.

Girard has said that "the great novel does not succeed in shattering" ["the lie of spontaneous desire"] although it never ceases to denounce it." The dictator's slavish pretension toward Old World culture is clear enough, and while the objects of his desire (identity and feelings of self-worth) are not overt, they can be discovered through inference and textual analysis. Indeed, one of the lessons of the text is that the ostensibly enlightened despot is in fact quite in the dark in the most fundamental way; he is ignorant of himself. More than ignorant, he deceives himself with a mediated desire that at once reveals self-hatred, as well as stimulates and perpetuates his country's own lack of identity. To know all is most assuredly not to forgive very much in the present case, for no amount of explanation can excuse the sort of cruel, ruthless exploitation and tyranny which the dictator subjects his country to, and which is there for every reader to see. I have said that Reasons of State is not primarily a political novel, and indeed the novel's major weakness is in its awkward and belated attempt in the final chapter to move the overtly political strand (represented in this chapter by the Student and other, newly introduced, revolutionary figures in Paris), which has been of a secondary nature up to this point, into the foreground with the primary material concerning the Ex's identity. The belated appearance of this material is an intrusion which makes it seem as though Carpentier felt compelled to write a political novel, or at least to end his novel on an overtly political note, in spite of his own desires for his text.

To point out that the novel's main theme is identity is not to say, however, that the text has no political ramifications. The dictator and his countrymen clearly reflect an archetypal and actual problem of peoples from underdeveloped Latin-American countries, that is, the necessity of searching for a means by which their identity may be created or known, standards by which it may be measured and means by which it may be reinforced. A people that do not know who they are can hardly expect to know where they wish to go or how they intend to get there. It is from this level that the text's most important actual/historical lessons emerge from its largely mythical treatment of Latin-American particulars. To recognize and understand the ramifications of a lack of authentic identity in a figure of political power and the feelings of inherent inferiority in his polity is surely an important first step toward understanding a regrettable facet of Latin-American history and of Third World sociopolitical dynamics.