At the interplace: 'Giant', Tino Villanueva and America’s promise of diversity

Abstract

The two founding conceptions of the “sublime” are Burke’s and Kant’s. Drawing from Casey (and Buber), the article introduces a third concept of the “interplace”, an in-between, relational space of mutuality. Building on this notion, it is argued that Tino Villanueva’s collection Scene from the Movie GIANT, written in response to the climactic scene of the film Giant, enacts an intervention into the scene’s interpellating force and, in so doing, doubly embodies the interplace. Further, it is argued that the film’s two scenes stage allegorically an interplace of the white American patriarchy’s dilemmas of the 1950s. The scenes problematize America’s ability to change and follow through on the promise of reconciliation in diversity. The last section of the paper reviews a number of paradigmatic challenges America has been rehearsing in the past decades and argues that the current backlash against the transformative agenda constitutes a disappointment of the hopes expressed by Giant and Villanueva. The divisive rhetoric of today represents a retreat from the interplace of dialog.