Chapter 2 - About the Postmodernist Convergence of the Baroque, the Subaltern, and Many Other Signs: A Conversation with John Beverley in the Cathedral of Learning

Summary

The History of John Beverley.

FGH: What would you like to recall as salient points in your training and formative years? [BA at Princeton (1964) and PhD in California, San Diego (1972)]? (Birth: Venezuela, 1943). What would you say your most important moments in between those two places are?

JB: I probably started getting interested in literature when I was in prep school. Apart from having brought up in Latin America, I have a conventional childhood. My father was a Republican businessman. In the late 1950s, there was existentialism and the Beat generation, so I started getting interested in this kind of material, especially the Beats. Because I spent a lot of time in Latin America and also after the Cuban Revolution that made Spanish and Latin American issues more urgent, I thought it would be okay to major in Spanish literature as opposed to English literature, philosophy, or history, which were the popular majors. I thought, “Why not do Spanish Literature?” I already had something of an interdisciplinary thing. I was in a program then called “Special Program in European Civilization,” where you majored in one department, but then you would have to take related courses in other departments. These related courses I took were mainly in philosophy. I had a second major in philosophy. That is where I took a course with Richard Rorty, who, just as a junior professor, was not so famous then. But I thought he taught a great course on analytic philosophy. At Princeton, I was mostly focusing on Spanish literature and the Baroque period. For some reason, I got into the Baroque. I had some friends. We got to listen to music together, we took peyote together, we would listen to Bach and stuff like that. All of that is very deep into the Baroque, I would say. We would look at books of painting and stuff like that. I was getting interested in Marxism too, without really knowing very much about it, mainly because of the Cuban Revolution. I started to read some Marxism and to identify myself as a socialist. I belonged to the Princeton Socialist Club.