From Specialism to Amateurishness: Opening the Compass from the University to the World

ABSTRACT:For the sake of aesthetically round dates, let us convene on the year 2000 as ab quo date for the rise of Iberian Studies as a paradigm intended to replace traditional Spanish studies. Two decades and at least one reaction later, the results are mixed. In many schools and among numerous scholars, the term "Iberian" was eagerly adopted, and even the name "Iberia" is sometimes employed as if it were a new political entity. Unfortunately the nominal change, where it occurred, remained without consequence, since most departments remain committed the post-imperial, or postcolonial, worldview, banking on the demographic extension of the Spanish language rather than on the intellectual appeal of its expressions. This is not a sound basis for a discipline in an age of rapid change and multiple dissolutions, and the syncretic approach to social events that seems to be the current attempt to regain relevance runs the risk of sinking the discipline into irrelevance.