CULT the Global Phallus

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The Global Phallus: On the Digital and

Allegorical Economy of the Hispanic

Subaltern in Hollywood Film

Joseba Gabilondo

On the Periphery of Globalization: The Hispanic Condition

In his Border Matters,Jose D.Saldvar asserts, US-Mexico borderwriting entails a new intercultural theory of making sensitive [sic]to both local processes and global forces, such as Euro-imperialism,colonialism, patriarchy, and economic and political hegemonies(35). If this is so, then Hollywood film is an ideal medium toelaborate an intercultural theory, especially if we accept that Holly-

wood nowadays is global, and thus not merely North American ornational (Neale and Smith). In this article, I propose to considerHollywood itselfas a representationalborder that must be theorizedin a way that encompasses both the USA/Mexican border and theextended USA/Latin American-Spanish border. In order to recycleold names and solve old antagonisms, here the term Hispanic

will be used, not against that of Latino, but as a more general oneencompassing the two global borders that define the Latino andLatin-American/Spanish condition. Thus a Hispanic, interculturalborder theory would help us understand several interconnectedproblems such as North American global hegemony, the ensuingHispanic global subalternity as well as the hibridating border rela-tionship between both cultural areas. By incorporating psychoanal-

ysis to border theory, I will attempt a geopolitical theorization of

Discourse, 23.1, Winter 2001, pp. 424. Copyright 2001 Wayne State University Press,Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.


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fantasy and desire in global and Hispanic cultures and will ques-

tion the meaning of a global Phallus as pertaining to a putativeglobal symbolic order. In other words, I will theorize the laws andrepresentations (Phallus) that regulate the libidinal economy ofthis so-called global culture as it borders with the Hispanic.1

Hispanic realities sprinkle any contemporary Hollywood filmbut they do not occupy central subject positions. Selma Hayek,

Antonio Banderas, or Jennifer Lopez reappears in films where theirHispanicexotism standsfor many forms of otherness.But to this day,they have never starred in a blockbuster film in which a Hispaniccharacter is the central focus of representation SelenaorThe Maskof Zorrowere the closest phenomena. At the same time, the increas-ing presence of these Hispanic representations in Hollywood alsopoints to the fact that they are historically intrinsic and necessary toHollywood. Hispanic reality occupies a structurally peripheral, yetnecessary, position in contemporary, globalized Hollywood to thepoint that there would be no Hollywood without it.

Spielberg and the Global Monster

According toTimes MagazineSpielberg is the most influentialdirector of the twentieth century (Pizzello 207). As Stephen Schiffproclaimed in 1994 after therelease ofJurassic Park, Spielberg is themost commercially successful movie director in history, with four ofthe top ten all-time box-office hits (171). Here, I will concentrate

in his three most influential and popular films to this date: Jaws(1975), ET(1982), and Jurassic Park(1993). With the exceptionof the Star Warsfilms and Titanic, the three above films stand asthe three highest grossing films of their times; each film broke anyprevious record in box-office return at the time of their release. 2

The protagonists of Spielbergs three films as well as manyother Hollywood blockbusters are large prehistoric animals,predators, and aliens. Thus, even the human, hegemonic North-

American subject position (white, masculine, heterosexual) seemsto be peripheral to these representations where monsters becomecentral. Needless to say, Spielbergs three films follow the almostarchetypal narrative of exorcising and liquidating the monster, so

that at the end of the films, white, masculine, heterosexual Anglo-America reemerges as the hegemonic subject of representation. Yet,it is precisely this human periphery organized around Spielbergsubiquitous monsters, which helps us understand the repercussionsof globalization for the Hispanic/North American border.


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Let me, first of all, exert a rather hasty genealogy of the Spilber-

gian monsters in order to prove that this master trope central toSpielbergs and Hollywoods filmmaking experiences a process ofglobalization that parallels that of USAs neo-imperialist hegemony.If Jawsstill was a domestic and local problem framed within theold national paradigm of man against nature (best epitomizedby MelvillesMoby Dick),ETalready introduced a new subject thatcould not be reduced to the North-American national landscape:the extraterrestrial alien. Yet,ETalso had a home elsewhere as wellas some form of family; ultimately he mirrored from the trenchesof otherness another national home somewhere in outer space.However, after the Indiana Jonesseries (198189) reenacted the

Victorian tropes of British imperialism via the 30s super-hero nar-ratives of North American national culture, Jurassic Park already

stepped outside the USA national territory and ventured in thenew imperialist territory: the post-NAFTA Latin America. Let usremember that, in the case ofJurassic Park, the monster (dinosaurs)does nothail from USAsoil butrather from Central America (ambermines in Costa Rica). In the same way, the new audience of the re-sulting monstrous spectacle the Jurassic theme park is no longerconstructed by the film as North American but rather as global.

John Hammond, the entrepreneurialand visionary man behind theproject, envisions a public that will come from all over the world.

The move towards the globalization of the monster also takesplace at the level of the monsters point of view. In all Spielbergsfilms, the camera always allows the spectator to occupy the positionof the monster. Even in his earlyJaws, the camera immortalized theimage of a naked woman swimming in the dark as shot from under-neath the water the point of view of the shark. However, in his laterfilms the monster acquires an autonomous and actantial gaze. In

ET, the extraterrestrial gaze, both tender and scary, has an agencyof its own: it returns the look of the characters. It no longer is simplythe point of view of nature, as in Jaws. Yet, ETs gaze only looks atthe child protagonist, in a look exchange that opens and closes thefilm. That is, the monsters gaze is internal to the film: it is diegetic.

However, inJurassic Park,the monster does not only exchangelooks with the characters but also with the spectators. To use JeanLouis Baudrys terminology, the gaze no longer is confined to sec-ondary identification; it also encompasses primary identification,

it is a primary gaze. The Jurassic gaze exceeds the diegesis of thefilm and occupies that of the spectatorial experience. As a result,the monster returns the gaze of the spectator and thus interpellateshim/her as the viewing subject of a global spectacle, and ultimately,as global spectator. In this respect, the scene ofJurassic Parkwhere aT-rex looks inside the S.U.V. in which the two children protagonists


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are trapped is emblematic: the dinosaur looks directly into the

camera from within the frame of the window and thus also staresat the spectator. The dinosaurs ofJurassic Parkare no longer blindand savage nature that remains indifferent and unaware to humandrama. Rather, they become spectatorial subjects that look back atthe spectator. It is important to point out that the dinosaurs of thesecond installment ofJurassic Park(The Lost World) become moreferocious and savage creatures in possession of a calculating andactive subjectivity and gaze.

The scenario and gaze articulated by the monsters in Spiel-bergs films move from a national horizon to a global landscape

while at the same time becoming the enablers of a global represen-tation and subject position. It is precisely because the centrality ofthe monsters geopolitics and gaze, that any other human subject

position is displaced to the periphery. Thus, let us now consider,the cultural, historical, and geopolitical reasons that underlie thestructural relationship between globalization and periphery, mon-sters and subject positions.

On the Ethnicity and Race of Dinosaurs

As Spielberg has increasingly globalized his blockbuster films,he also has begun to direct another type of films that are dia-metrically different from the monster pictures: films in whichethnic and racial minorities become the central object and subject

of filmic representation. I am referring to films such as The ColorPurple(1985), Schindlers List(1993), and Amistad(1997). AlthoughSchindlers Listenjoyed unexpected success, considered as a wholethese three films remain minority films not only in terms of theircontent but also in their commercial appeal. In the case ofAmis-tad, the production company, Dreamworks, lost money (Dubner228).The Color Purpletoo, although nominated for several Oscars,received no recognition from either the Academy or the public.

AlthoughThe Color Purplewas a film that Spielberg made re-luctantly, in the case ofSchindlers ListandAmistad, he admits thatthe original reason was personal: his maturation as father, which inturn helped him to deal with his own ethnicity:

Schindlers List, he [Spielberg] says is the most personal film Ive evermade, because it was something I was so ashamed of. The it, of course,

was being Jewish. . . . Kate Capshaw [Spielbergs wife] converted to Ju-

daism before their marriage, in 1991. . . . They decided to raise theirchildren as Jews, including Theo and Mikaela [adopted African-Americanchildren]. And when Spielberg began to see Judaism as more blessing


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than curse, he was finally ready to make Schindlers List, which he had

been flirting with for nearly a decade. (Dubner 230)

In the case ofAmistad, Spielberg also cites the importance of hisadopted children: Well, we were already talking to Theo about slav-ery and where he came from and who his great-great-grandparentsmight have been. . . . So when I heard the story, I immediatelythought that this was something that I would be pretty proud tomake, simply to say to my son, Look, this is about you (Dubner231).3 Thus while Spielberg became globally successful in makingblockbuster films that push any human subject position to theperiphery, at some point he decided to explore his own personalethnic and racial history. As a result he has made films that, the-oretically at least, re-center precisely the subject positions that are

displaced by his commercially successful films.As was the case with his monster films, Spielbergs representa-

tions of minorities have also undergone a process of globalization.The earlyThe Color Purpleis a national drama, even though it doescontain some filmic references to Africa. The more recentAmistadandSchindlers Listare clearly filmed and presented as global filmsconcerning minorities. The slaves ofAmistadare African and areinvolved in an international legal and political dispute concerningSpain, the USA, and Britain. Similarly, the Jews ofSchindlers Listare mostly Polish and are caught in the expansionist politics of NaziGermany over Poland and Czechoslovakia. The film also shows aRussian soldier liberating the Jewish workers after the Nazi surren-der, and the final sequence also makes references to Schindlers

visit to Israel.So far, Spielberg has dealt only with Jewish and African-

American stories. He has not made a film focusing specificallyon some Hispanic reality. In fact, I would like to suggest that theHispanic case is probably the most problematic one, since theabsence of a reference points to a deep ambivalence, wherebyHispanic minorities are clearly and necessarily peripheral in Spiel-bergs blockbuster films and yet impossible to represent as such, ina minority film.4

In the case of Spielbergs blockbuster films, and at a referentialand diegetic level, the Hispanic presence is evident. It is not a coin-cidence that the Spilbergian dinosaurs are born in Latin America

and, after failing as attractions in an ecological theme park in CostaRica, are brought to the USA. Although they are originally broughtas a commodity, thedinosaurs break loose,crossthe borderunlaw-fully, and end up terrorizing downtown San Diego significantly, aborder city, which makes these dinosaurs illegal immigrants.


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Moreover, this Latin American referentiality goes to the core

of the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition. As Joseph McBride statesin his Spielberg biography, if Jurassic Parkis indebted to MichaelChrichtons 1973 film Westworld, it is more so to Arthur ConanDoyles 1912 novel The Lost World (417) a debt that the sequelacknowledges in the title. Doyles novel also narrates the adventuresof an explorer who finds a Latin American plateau populated bydinosaurs and ape-men. In turn, it is not difficult to establish aconnection between Doyles work and Daniel Defoes foundationalRobinson Crusoe(1719). This genealogy points to the fact that Latin

America occupies a utopian position as pristine and savage naturein Anglo-Saxon history and culture throughout modernity, due toits construction as non-colonial new world opposite the con-struction of North America as colonial new world. However, Latin

America still appears as central to Spielbergs films only at a refer-ential level. A comparison with Spielbergs other minority films,however, reveals that this referential and peripheral position of theHispanic condition responds to a deeper and more unconsciousdynamic that is not accidental but structural.

The centralized representation of the Jewish and African-American minorities, in Spielbergs films allow us to see the struc-tural continuity between monsters and minorities, blockbusters andperipheral films (and ultimately the position of the Hispanic). Thisrelation is not simply referential, but strictly cinematic. There is nomore uncanny experience than contemplating the eye of the T-rexlooking through the window of an S.U.V. towards the camera in

Jurassic Parkand then turning our look at the opening sequenceofAmistadwhere the gigantic and almost monstrous eye of Cinque(Djimon Hounsou), the slave responsible for the rebellion of theshipAmistad, is also looking at the camera and thus the spectator.It is the same gaze, the monstrous gaze of the dinosaur and theslave, framed the same way, engaged in similar activities pullingpeople from inside cars, pulling nails from inside the slave quarters.The gaze of the dinosaur and the slave are continuous, albeit notidentical, in Spielbergs filmic imagination.

A similar pivotal moment takes place inSchindlers List. Thereis a sequence towards the end of the film, in which Schindler andhis wife drive away dressed as prisoners in order to avoid detection.In that scene, Schindler looks out the window towards the crowd of

free Jews he is leaving behind; at that point he looks directly into thecamera. At the same time, the reflection of the window also allowsthe spectator to see the Jewish people looking back at Schindler.Consequently both Schindler and the Jewish people reflected onthe window look simultaneously at the camera and, thus, at the


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spectator. However, as Schindler disappears so does the gaze of the

Jewish people: in other words, a gentilebecomes the upholder andfacilitator of the Jewish gaze. Only insofar as both the Jews andthe spectator identify with Schindlers gaze can the recognitionbetween them take place. At that point this recognition is the effectand result of a monstrous Nazi reality: Schindler himself. Only if

Jewish people become Schindler, an ex-Nazi, do they subject thespectator to their gaze. At no point can the Jewish people on cameraappeal to the spectator directly. The Jewish gaze has to becomemonstrous first: the gaze of the T-rex ofJurassic Parkhas come fullcircle. This cinematic structure also accounts for the main criticismthat Schindlers Listreceived from Jewish critics: Schindler (in itsmonstrous and abject condition as both Nazi and anti-Nazi), ratherthan the Jews, is the central character of the film (Baxter 392).

As Philip Gourevitch from the Jewish newspaper Forward put itpowerful spectacle continues to be more beguiling than humanhistorical authenticity and the power of the Nazis is a bigger drawthan the civilisation of the people murdered (qtd. in Baxter 392).

A historical coordinate must be incorporated to the discussionof the cinematic continuity between monsters and minorities. InSpielbergs films, (pre)history, both Jurassic and national, func-tions as the favorite landscape from which the global is articulatedas a contemporary event. However, even history is turned intoa peripheral position of narration and meaning. Spielberg neveraddresses the main narratives (or metanarratives) and subjects ofhistory: the downfall of dinosaurs, the extermination of Jews by theNazis, the experience of slavery in the Southern states of the USA.Rather he chooses a more peripheral event: the exceptional caseof Schindler, a case of false slavery in the Atlantic protagonizedby a decadent empire such as the Spanish, the consequences of

Jurassic mosquitoes trapped in sap and turned into amber. Fromhis chosen peripheries, however, History is reinterpreted so thatthose marginal events become global and contemporary ones, ulti-mately standing for a new global History based on peripheral micro-narratives that are nevertheless palatable for global audiences. Forinstance, the absence of Costa Rican authorities and subjects in

Jurassic Parkturns the historical return of dinosaurs into a NorthAmerican event, and then into a global one. The only Spanishvoices heard at the beginning of the film also melt in an auditive

continuum with the dinosaurs roaring. In the same way, and in thecase ofAmistad, one can seehow thealmost caricaturesque portrayalof decadent Spanish imperialism turns the USA authorities of thenorth into subjects of political emancipation, void of any imperi-alist involvement. The Spaniards turn the North Americans into


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subjects of universal political emancipation the North-American

slave-holding South disappears as central focus.The continuity between monsters and minorities can certainly

be articulated at a psychoanalytical level. Both are mobilized inorder to resituate and uphold the hegemony of the white, hetero-sexual, North-American position. This position is always repre-sented in Spielbergs films by a fatherly figure that, in its failedcentrality, is nevertheless rescued as hegemonic. Ultimately, thehegemonic North-American position completes the equation be-tween monsters and minorities. The triad white-minority-monsterexplains the deepest representational and subjective structure inSpielbergs films.

My claim about the fluidity between central and peripheralpositions, monsters and minorities in Spielbergs films allows me

to reinterpret the narrative center of his films: dinosaurs, sharks,and aliens are not simply monsters. They also have a very specificrace, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality no matter how peripheral orunconscious these traces are to the main monstrous representation.

When these monsters return the gaze of the spectator, the latter isconstructed as subject of (subjected to) the subaltern condition ofthe former. Thus, ultimately these blockbuster films are construct-ing a global and subaltern postcolonial gaze that the spectators,North American and otherwise, experience as central to their spec-tatorial experience: the other is subaltern and/or postcolonial.

It is worth asking why the Hispanic condition is so peripheral inHollywoods globalrepresentations. Why does Hollywood constructa globalspectatorial subjectivity by turning the subaltern (Hispanic)subject into a monster? Why is the Hispanic condition made intoa monstrous experience? In short, why is the Hispanic condition

Jurassic?6

Representing The Global

In order to respond to theperipheral conditionof Hispanic rep-resentations, on the one hand, and the fluidity between monstruousand minority representations, on the other, we must first addressthe problem of representing globalization altogether. Interestinglyenough, the representational problem we have encountered in

Spielbergs films is also duplicated at a theoretical level where mostthinking about globalization also turns any subaltern position intoa peripheral one.

Fredric Jameson, arguably the most lucid theorist of global-ization, has declared that globalization, the historical result of the


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development of late capitalism in postcolonial and postmodern

societies, cannot be represented. This impossibility represents abrake from modernity when industrial capitalism and the Europeanimperialist nation-states found their representational form in thenovel, which became a national allegory of the bourgeois individualand its world. As simple and as clear as Jamesons claim about theimpossibility of representing globalization appears at first sight, itsnegativity captures a very complex problem, so complex that itis hard to put it in positive terms. Jameson warns against simpleanswers:

. . . in an era of urban dissolution and re-ghettoization . . . we might betempted to think that the social can be mapped that way, by followingacross a map insurance red lines and the electrified borders of private

police and sur veillance forces. Both images are, however, only caricaturesof themode of production itself(mostoftencalled late capitalism),whosemechanisms anddynamicsare notvisiblein that sense,cannot bedetectedon thesurfacesscanned bysatellites,and thereforestandas a fundamentalrepresentational problem indeed, a problem of a historically new andoriginal type. (Geopolitical2)

Yet at the same time Jameson adds all thinking today is also,whatever else it is, an attempt to think the world system as such(4). I believe that his claim can be extended to any representationalform, not only thinkingsensu stricto. Thus this ongoing attempt torepresent and think globalization amounts to the positive momentof the same problem, which nevertheless remains almost impossibleto render in its entirety and complexity under a positive form.

Elaborating on one of his earlier claims, Jameson asserts, in hisThe Geopolitical Aestheticsthat allegory is the new privileged form in

which the contradiction between the inability to represent global-ization and the ceaseless attempt to represent it, takes place. Thereason for the reappearance of allegory, a very Deleuzian reason,is the following: On the global scale, allegory allows the mostrandom, minute, or isolated landscapes to function as a figurativemachinery in which questions about the system and its controlover the local ceaselessly rise and fall, with a fluidity that has noequivalent in those older national allegories of which I have spokenelsewhere (45).

Jameson also discusses the issue of the subject and its actantiality

in the era of globalization. According to Jameson any subject posi-tion, any partial subject position, can be allegorically representativeof a putative international proletariat or managerial class. As heclaims, [O]n the actantial level, a host of partial subjects, fragmen-tary and schizoid constellations, can often now stand in allegorically


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for trends and forces in the world system, in a transitional situation

in which genuinelytransnational classes, such as a new internationalproletariat and a new density of global management, have not yetanywhere clearly emerged (5).

However, even if Jameson claims that random, isolated land-scapes and partial subjects can allegorically represent globaliza-tion as world-system, our analysis of Spielbergs films points ratherto a different reality. It seems as if only certain landscapes andsubjects can stand in allegorically for globalization and its classes.The Hispanic subject functions as isolated landscape but not aspartial subject. Furthermore, in Spielbergs case, only the whitepatriarchal figure, from its peripheral partiality, can stand in forglobalization.

Jameson proposes that it is precisely the binary logic of the

subject and its others that makes globalization untotalizable andthus unthinkable. In his own terminology, any partial subject canstand in for globalization but cannot represent it in its totality. Thissubject can only allegorically hint, insinuate, or point to totalityand globalization. The subjects very same position intensifies theimpossibility of accessing and representing the global. Jamesonsnegativity in defining globalization as un-totalizable does not nec-essarily respond to a historical problem concerning globalization,but rather to his own epistemological and discursive approach toglobalization, which is not based on any subaltern position, and thusignores the fact that only certain subject positions can allegorizethe global. At the same time, by stating that any partial subject canallegorically representglobalization, he does not address the natureof irrepresentability itself. At this point, Jameson begins to soundLacanian, or Zizekian, but without the benefit of psychoanalysis.

Jamesons argument runs parallel to the Lacanian proposition thatthe symbolic order (in this case globalization and late capitalism)can only be accessed at an imaginary level by the subject; throughidentification or desire towards other partial subjects. Colin Mac-Cabe hints at the problem of Jamesons thinking when he notes inhis introduction to the latters The Geopolitical Aesthetic, [W]hat isnovel for a Marxist theory is that what Jamesons account lacks isa psychology rather than a sociology. What Jamesons requires isan account of the mechanisms which articulate individual fantasyand social organization (xii). Going back to our discussion, then,

Jamesons position cannot account for the fact that Spielbergsdinosaurs are not partial subjects but allegorical referents that dorepresent globalization as global.

Lacanian theory does account for the imaginary position ofSpielbergs monsters in globalization. In Lacanian terms one could


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argue that dinosaurs stand for the name of the global Father. Mon-

sters such as dinosaurs are the name or allegorical referent thatestablishes and regulates the laws of globalization and its represen-tation: dinosaurs are the global Phallus. However, Lacanian theorycannot account for the position of subaltern subjects (such as theHispanic) vis-a-vis a putative global Phallus, that is why it is soimportant to understand the ways in which the representation ofdinosaurs captures peoples imagination about globalization whileat the same time standing for the gaze and subjectivity of minoritiessuch as the Hispanic. It is paramount, therefore, to explain the wayin which dinosaurs establish and regulate the allegorical laws thatdetermine the globalized representations of subjects such as theHispanic.

Zizek does theorize the meaning of representations of monsters

such as Spielbergs dinosaurs when discussing the way in whichLacanian theory can be applied to the analysis of postmodernism.

According to Zizek, monsters stand for the traumatic irruptionexperienced by the symbolic order in postmodernity. He dismissesthe imaginary nature of monsters such as dinosaurs and definesthem as the Real, as elements that exist outside the symbolic order(of globalization). Following Freud and Lacan, he names thesemonstruous representations The Thing (Das Ding). The Thingrepresents the new irruption of the Real in postmodernism:

What characterizes postmodernism is therefore an obsession with Thing,with a foreign body within the social texture, in all its dimensions thatrange from woman qua the unfathomable element that undermines the

rule of the reality principle (Blue Velvet), through science-fiction mon-sters (Alien) and autistic aliens (Elephant Man), up to the paranoiac visionof social totality itself as the ultimate fascinating Thing, a vampire-likespecter which marks even the most idyllic everyday surface with signs oflatent corruption. (122)

Zizek acknowledges the important function of the Real/The Thingin postmodernity when he affirms, that the Thing is not simplya foreign body . . . [it] is what holds together the social edificeby means of guaranteeing its fantasmatic consistency (123). How-ever, when he refers to the Thing as the intrusion of the Real inthe symbolic order, he can only think of its agency as incestuousenjoyment of the mother beyond symbolization and thus beyond

culture, since incest is the defining and founding limit of society.Moreover, Zizek claims that the Real brings about the unveilingof the signifier that represents the symbolic order, i.e. the Phallus:In postmodernism, this apparition of the phallus is universalized(12829). If the relationship between dinosaurs and globalization is


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not simply symbolic/imaginary but real/symbolic, then Zizek helps

us understand that dinosaurs are the Thing that holds togetherthe representation of globalization and thus the process itself ofglobalization by which the Phallus turns into global and universal.

Contrary to Zizeks position, my analysis of the dinosaurs gazesheds light on the fact that the Thing does not stand simply forthe Real as some state beyond culture and society the incestuousenjoyment of the mother beyond symbolization. Rather the Realstands for the subalternity of subjects such as the Hispanic. The Realis not nature or the incestuous mother and her enjoyment butrather most subject positions that are not symbolized by the globalsymbolic order, and are held as such, as spectral or monstruousThings; in this way they uphold and give meaning to the globalsymbolic order. This reasoning explains why, in Spielbergs films,

there is continuity between monsters and minorities and at thesame time only monstrous representations are globally recognizedas meaningful. If the monster could be represented as the truereferent of the global as the referential and mimetic represen-tation of the global the latter would become the representationof all the subaltern positions created by globalization itself. Suchrepresentation would be some kind of Borgesian Aleph where allsubaltern positions could be contemplated at the same time in onesingle referent.

In order to expound the relationship between the monstrousrepresentations of globalization and the subaltern positions thatremain globally unrepresented, it is necessary to resort to WalterBenjamins theorization of allegory, rather than Jamesons. Whentheorizing Baroque theater and its allegorical structure, Benjaminconcludes that allegory is connected not with new formationssuch as the global but with decay and ruin. According to Ben-

jamin, (Baroque) allegory is the technology that allows the modernsubject to perceive itself as vanishing and decaying in the objectual-ity of ruins, into historys deadly passing: The allegorical physiog-nomy of the nature-history . . . is present in reality in the form ofthe ruin. In the ruin history has merged into the setting. And in thisguise history does not assume the form of the process of an eternallife so much as that of irresistible decay. . . . Allegories are, in therealm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things (17778).

At the same time, Benjamin claims that allegor y represents the

pagan and classical Europe that modernity needs to demonize andrepress as monster, periphery, and liminality in order to establishitself as representation. Ultimately pagan and classical Europe neverdisappears; it haunts modernity from the fringes of history. InBenjamins words If the church had not been able quite simply


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to banish the gods from the memory of the faithful, allegorical

languagewouldneverhavecomeintobeing.Foritisnotanepigonalvictory monument; but rather the word which is intended to exor-cise a surviving remnant of antique life (223). Although Benjamindoes not elaborate on the geopolitical dimensions of the allegoricalexorcism of Europes limits, one can retrospectively rewrite thisexorcism as also affecting the limits of Western imperialism andits subjects.7

In the case of globalization, the surviving remnants of antiquelife are precisely postcolonial subaltern subject positions such asthe Hispanic. They linger as the mark or remainder of an olderreality, national (Latin America) and imperialist (Spain), that thenew global hegemony of the USA needs to exorcise as monstruousin order to allegorize itself as global. Positions such as the Hispanic

need to be allegorically turned into subaltern in order for the newNorth-American economic and cultural hegemony to assert itselfas global. It is precisely because this hegemony depends on themonstruous exorcism of different subaltern positions that globalrepresentations are allegorical: the modern symbol could not carryout such task.

At the same time, the ruinous and decaying nature of allegor yexplains the continuity in Spielbergs films between monsters andminorities. Minorities are simply another ruinous way to allegorizeand contain subaltern positions that can no longer be exorcisedunder global allegories such asJurassic Park. Thus, minority filmsrepresent the first sign of the ruins of monstrous global allegories

while pointing to the fact that other minorities such as the Hispanicremain subaltern.

The Digital and Allegorical Economy of Dinosaurs

Several factors make the choice of dinosaurs ideal for an alle-gorical representation of globalization: pre-historical remoteness,ubiquitous location in the globe, status as the largest animals onearth, dramatic and yet unexplained disappearance, supposedlyideological neutrality vis-a-vis ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality,etc. Dinosaurs are the perfect allegorical rendition of a naturalform of globalized late capitalism.

At a very referential level and returning to Benjamin, one canseemore clearly whydinosaurs areso adequate forallegorizing glob-alization and late capitalism: nature, at its largest size, also conveysthe message of decay, ruin, crisis, and disappearance. Dinosaursare the key natural allegory to communicate the message that


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globalization is built on the ruins of past realities: the nation-state

and its colonies. At the same time, globalization is also haunted byruins and decay (global subaltern subjects) unless, paraphrasingBenjamin, they are exorcised with the right word: the dinosaurs of

Jurassic Park.At the end of the film, only the film itself, as visual narrative,

transcends the decay and ruinof both dinosaursand late capitalism:the only transcendent global reality is thus the allegory of global-ization itself. That transcendence explains why this film has such astrong effect on a global scale. It legitimizes itself as a global hege-monic discourse that, in its allegorical status, manages to escaperuin and decay. First and foremost, Jurassic Parkis a global allegoryof Hollywoods own globalization. As a result of this hegemoniceffectof global suture a Hollywood film as the only andtrueglobal

space of representation any other subject becomes relegated to asubaltern position: precisely the subaltern world that the allegoryexorcises.

At a cinematic and technological level, the allegorical exorcismalso works powerfully through the digitalization of dinosaurs. Asmany commentators have emphasized, the real protagonists of thefilm are the dinosaurs: not only is their natural size awesome,but also their technological realism. Although the filmic renditionof big animals and monsters is historically old in Hollywood it

will suffice to mention King Kong (1933) the introduction ofcomputers makes previous robotics technology obsolete. At thesame time, digital technology gives the aura of being naturalto the new renditions: the new digital representations defy thecinematic expectations that the spectators have so far built aroundrobotics technology. Ironically, digital technology makes dinosaurslook more natural, more realistic, than robotic technology, whichexplains why Jurassic Park, opposite The Terminator 2 or The NuttyProfessor, does not use morphing or warping technology but simpledigital compositing of three-dimensional images. Whatis impressiveaboutJurassic Parkis precisely the way in which digital technologydoes not alter, morph, or warp nature, but rather makes it looknatural. It is the self-erasing of technology that is technologicallymost impressive in the film.

The importance of the history of film technology and the en-suing cinematic expectations of realism are crucial to the effect of

auratic naturalness. The generation of moving three-dimensionalimages (dinosaurs) that could then be composited in a film wasinexistent at the time of the pre-production ofJurassic Park. There

were not precedents. As Spielberg himself confesses: None of usexpected that ILM would make the next quantum leap in computer


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graphics at least not in time for this picture (Shay and Duncan

51). Furthermore, the newness of this technology is so much con-nectedto thehistory of cinematic technology that, when theroboticexperts saw the new digital renditions for the first time, they them-selves used a paleontologic discourse to describe their new positionin technology history as extinct. As Spielberg himself clarifies:At the showing, Phil [Tippett, specialist in robotics] groaned andpretty much declared himself extinct (Shay and Duncan 52).

As Shay and Duncan also explain, the novelty of this digitaltechnology was so extreme that it affected even the creators them-selves. Dennis Muren, the chief technician in charge of the digitalgeneration of dinosaurs at Lucass ILM, describes his own reactionto the sight of the first T-rex in motion: The shot started out withthe T-rex maybe a hundred feet away, about two-thirds the size of theframe. Then it just walked toward the camera, step by step, and wesort of tiltedup at thehead as it passedby.Everybody went absolutelycrazy. It was like nothing anyone had seen before (51). Muren alsonarrates the reaction this technology had on Spielberg: But Stevenrealized that there was something extraordinary going on here andhe decided rather unexpectedly to do everything except the livestuff with computer graphics (Shay and Duncan 52). Thus, if anyspectator wanted to see this awesome display of digital technology,he or she had to see Jurassic Park.8 At the same time, the fact thata global audience wanted to see the film had a secondary effect ofglobalization in the sense that in order to become a global spectatorany viewer had to see the film that the rest of the world waswatching.

However the allegorization of digital technology also serves asthe word that exorcises the subaltern world. The dinosaurs runamok in the film and, at the end, they are either exterminated orleft behind to die. There is a second disappearance, not only of thedinosaurs, but also the technology that produces them. At the endof the film, the viewer, after being exposed to digital technology, isleft with a view of the human protagonists escaping from the islandin an old technological medium a helicopter, thus, the film alsoexorcises digital technology at a primary level.

Considering that computer technology is mainly responsiblefor the economic disparity (late capitalism) that ultimately triggersthe global migrancy of postcolonial and subaltern subjects fromthe Third world into the first, then one must consider that the

exorcism of dinosaurs also responds to an exorcism of digital tech-nology and global subalternity, which come to view and gain globalrepresentational existence at the same time. This effect of the dig-itazion of the Jurassic allegory must be denounced as hegemonic:the allegorical equation of dinosaurs and digital technology makes


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any subaltern position the subject of technology not a position

subjected totechnology. As a result the subaltern is exorcised becausehe/she is rendered responsible for the technology that has broughtglobalization ultimately ludite ideology.

At the level of the cinematic institution, dinosaurs also have adifferent but complementary allegorical effect. ObviouslyJurassicParkis literally about a theme park; but on a more allegorical levelit is also a representation of Hollywood itself. The fact that the parkeventually runs amok at the end of the story must not be confused

with some form of criticismabout the entertainment industry or latecapitalism tout court. It is ratherthe other way around, theallegoricalexcess permits the film to control representation and assert itselfas more than sheer entertainment, as exceeding, the naivete orinsufficiencies of a theme park and thus ultimately Hollywood itself.

The demise of the park portrayed at the end of the film differen-tiates the allegorical representation from the film itself as allegory.Given that the film ends well as filmic narrative, as a continuouslyedited allegorical narrative, it ultimately stresses the allegorical ca-pacity of Hollywood to represent itself and contain itself beyondany imperfection or crisis. This is the ultimate ideological tourde force of this Jurassic allegory. In this truly Benjaminean sense,Hollywood becomes the subject of the allegory of globalization: itis able to produce an allegorical and global representation capableof summoning all its subaltern monsters and then exorcising them.

Taking into consideration all the levels at which allegory servesto exorcise subaltern subjects, now we can finally return to thespecific case of the Hispanic subaltern. The absence of Hispanicallegories in Spielbergs films is in fact symbolic of a generalized(mis)representation of North Americas history. Unlike African-

American and Jewish ethnicities, the Hispanic ethnicity is still per-ceived asforeignto the U.S., belonging to either a Latin Americanor Spanish past, which explains precisely why it does not work asan allegorical element to re-legitimize North American allegoriesof globalization. While the Hispanic subaltern position appearsin global allegories of North America (such as Jurassic Park), it isnot represented as one that can help to contain and exorcise theruins and decay brought about by global subalternity and thus, inthe continuum of monsters and minorities, the Hispanic subjectposition remains unconscious.

From Deleuzes Anti-Oedipusto Border Theory

Foucault said once that the twentieth century would be Deleu-zian or it would not. Indeed the schizophrenic fragmentation of the


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subject Deleuze and Guattari had announced in their Anti-Oedipus

already has taken center-place in the allegorical representationsof Hollywood. In this sense, their prognosis of late capitalism wasfrightfully correct even in the dawn of our new millennium. How-ever, Deleuze and Guattari did not account for the subject positionsthat an allegorical fragmentation, rather than a schizophrenic one,articulates. In this sense, the Anti-Oedipus and the body withoutorgans work more as a global allegory of the hegemonic North-

American subject than a criticism of late capitalism. In this senseFoucault was right, globalization has turned out to be very muchDeleuzian. However, as in any other allegory of globalization, atstake is the re-positioning of other (past) realities, such as theHispanic, in the new realm of global subalternity. Accordingly anynew theorization of a global Phallus, a global Anti-Oedipus, or

a new global symbolic order, as THE Phallus/Oedipus/Symboliconly legitimizes the allegorical economy of globalization and itshegemonic subjects.

From a Hispanic position one can see the new position that mi-norities (North American and non-North American) are taking inthe repeated allegorical re-legitimation of globalization. Indeed theHispanic is a new border, not simply a geopolitical border betweenLatin America-Spain and the USA, between Latino culture andNorth American white culture, but also between North-Americanglobal hegemony and subaltern positions throughout the world.

Jameson, very lucidly, advocates for cognitive maps that willallow us to chart the globalized world emerging from the devel-opment of late capitalism (Cognitive). My analysis, from a His-panic position, brings new political and theoretical tools to rethinkcognitive mapping. First and foremost, I would argue that onecannot create a map, The Map, from any hegemonic position. Anysuch map would simply re-legitimize, in its allegorical complexity,globalization andits subject. There is no mapwith a Symbolic Order,an (Anti-)Oedipus, or a global Phallus, which does not legitimizeglobalization while relegating subaltern positions outside the map.

The Hispanic position points to the fact that each subalternposition is or can be in a different peripheral or bordering relation-ship with globalization. Thus any map of globalization cannot bethought out as global, as accounting for every subaltern position.

Any map must be conceptualized first and foremost as a border.

This cartographic border can not simply be geopolitical, it mustalso be historical and psychoanalytical; it must account for theposition, partly unconscious, occupied by any subaltern position vis-a-vis globalization as a result of its geopolitical positioning as wellas of its history. Thus, this analysis emphasizes the incorporation


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of a psychological apparatus to main border theory (Anzaldua)

or theories of hybridization (Garca Canclini), so that the bordercan also be thought out as producing specific subject positions andeffects. In this way, claims such as those of Latino, queer theorist

Jose Esteban Muoz We desire it, but we desire it with a difference(15) take also a specific global and geopolitical location.

Because each subaltern position occupies a different positionvis-a-vis globalization, only an overlapping of different borders willallow us to ascertain where the allegories of globalization stand.

At this point for example, certain North American minorities areacknowledged as global minorities, whereas others such as theHispanic are not. Thus, only by drawing two different border mapscan we begin to account for globalization and its representationsin our new millennium. This way of mapping always situates its

locus and subject of enunciation and thus joins a postcolonialdiscourse (Bhabha, Mignolo) that alongside feminism (Haraway)advocates for situated knowledges. Spielbergs films stand as animportant point of reference in any situated and located mappingand cognitive activity for a Hispanic intercultural theory of theborder.

Notes

1 This article is circumscribed to geopolitical issues. However, and forproblems of space, a queer, feminist reading, which is implicit throughoutthe text, cannot be explicitly elaborated here.

2 According toVariety, the first thirteen all-time domestic grossers, asof 2000, are:Titanic(1997);Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope(1977);StarWars:Episode I - ThePhantom Menace(1999);E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial(1981);

Jurassic Park(1993);Forrest Gump(1994); The Lion King(1994); Return of theJedi(1983); Independence Day(1996);The Empire Strikes Back(1980);HomeAlone(1990);The Sixth Sense(1999);Jaws(1975).

3 This pattern extends to his latest film Saving Private Ryan: Thatmovie was for my dad. When I first read the script, I said, My dad is goingto love this movie (Dubner 231).

4 In case there is doubt about the minority logic of the recent Spiel-bergean production, it will suffice to saythat Spielbergs next projectedfilmisMemories of a Geisha(Dubner 22728). This time the Asian condition

will be subject to a minority representation.5 Schiff argues that Spielberg films are . . . full of yearning for home

and family, and especially for fathers departed fathers (as inET, Empire ofthe Sun,and Indiana Jones and theLast Crusade), failed fathers (The Sugarland

Express, Hook, thegrand-father inJurassic Park), fathers whobecome distant,


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evil, or unrecognizable (Close Encounters, IndianaJonesand the Temple of Doom,

The Color Purple), and fathers who return to save the day (Jaws, JurassicPark, Hook). EvenSchindlers Listcan be viewed as a story of patriarchy ofSchindler, an irresponsible child-man who must become father enough toprotect his immense family from the enormity that will otherwise destroyit. In Spielbergs movies, fatherhood has a mystical shimmer (186). It mustbe noted that ex-president John Quincy Adams occupies a similar position(failed centrality) inAmistad.

6 One could conclude that Asia, and the Orient in general, is ap-proached by Spielberg through the canonical tropes of British imperialismin films such as the Indiana Jonesseries orThe Empire of the Sun.

7 Abdul R. JanMohamed, following Fanon, traces the deployment ofallegory by the colonial discourse in his The Economy of Manichean

Allegory. However, he does not elaborate on the origins of allegory.

8 As Biskind explains the incorporation of digital technology as away to reproduce images represents, in a first moment, a way of cuttingproduction costs. However, even after the cutting, costs remain exorbitantand thus they ensure Hollywoods monopoly on computer-generated films:

But the advances in robotics come at a price. The cost of CGI is goingdown even when the enormous overhead of a shop like ILM is addedin whereas the cost of Winstons work is going up. . . . Not that CGI ischeap. Says Spielberg, It still runs you between $250,000 and $500,000to put anything into a computer, even a small, uncomplicated dinosaur,and thats before you generate a single shot. If youve got a dinosaur just

walking around, its $80,000 for eight seconds. If the dinosaur is splashingin a puddle or kicking up tufts of dirt, its $100,000. If there are fourdinosaurs in the background of that shot, its $150,000. (203)

However, Biskind quotes a robotics specialist, Winston, in order toexplain that,ultimately, digital reproduction might actually be more expen-sivethan robotic technology and thus might secure Hollywoods monopoly:once you build a model, you can shoot it from as many angles as you withfor nor more than the cost of the film, whereas with CGI, every new angleis a new shot that could carry a six-digit price tag (203).

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