Writing in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Ireland in the Work of Joseba Sarrionandia, Lluís Maria Xirinacs and Máirtín Ó Cadhain
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Seeking the Singular Universal: Writing in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Ireland in the work of Joseba Sarrionandia, Lluís Maria Xirinacs and Máirtín Ó Cadhain Patrick Carlin This thesis is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Welsh Cardiff University 2020 ABSTRACT This thesis links the concepts of modernity, its relationship with contested territorial sovereignty and how writerly production in a non-statewide or minority language in European political space interprets the impacts of the modern condition upon citizens living in contested political communities. Specifically, it looks at how left-wing authors writing in non-hegemonic, non-statewide languages claim particular and universal belonging for the minority political community they ascribe to and how equality is sought out from the recognition of difference and the consequences of such recognition. Chapter One analyses modernity from within nationalism studies as well as International Relations and literary criticism literatures. Three empirical chapters follow, beginning with Chapter Two which deals with the exiled Basque poet, novelist and essayist Joseba Sarrionandia. Chapter Three discusses the Catalan priest and civil disobedience activist Lluís Maria Xirinacs whilst Chapter Four focuses on the Irish novelist, short-story writer and language activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain. In the light of these central chapters, Chapter Five expands upon the themes developed in the introductory chapter, combining Reinhart Koselleck’s ‘history of the vanquished’ with Walter Benjamin’s reinvigoration of history as well as utopian and dystopian elements in the authors’ work to further enquire about the political ontology of the self-ascribing minority community they write mainly for. The thesis presents, for the first time to an English-speaking readership, an in-depth treatment of the writerly production of Joseba Sarrionandia and Lluís Maria Xirinacs and analyses them within a comparative framework. i Table of Contents Page Chapter One: Introduction: Mapping the Modern from ................................................ 1 Inside and Outside The Rise of the Modern ................................................................................................. 15 Mapping the Modern: Inside / Outside .......................................................................... 19 Mapping the Modern: Literary Criticism ...................................................................... 24 The Persistence of the Modern ...................................................................................... 29 Modernity in Minority Language Literature ................................................................. 33 Chapter Two: Introduction: The World is a Prison – Basque Political ......................... 39 Community in the Work of Joseba Sarrionandia Joseba Sarrionandia: Conceiving the Political .............................................................. 42 Political Violence .......................................................................................................... 68 Joseba Sarrionandia: Imagery and Reception ............................................................... 76 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter Three: Introduction: Lluís Maria Xirinacs – The Inside and Outside ............. 84 of a Political Ontology Lluís Maria Xirinacs: The Early Years ........................................................................ 87 The Activist Years: Civil Disobedience and Hunger Strikes ....................................... 97 Xirinacs as Senator: The Civil Disobedient within Institutions .................................. 120 Xirinacs: The Final Years ............................................................................................ 131 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 140 Chapter Four: Introduction: Máirtín Ó Cadhain – The Clear, Political ....................... 142 Choice of Allegory Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Local, Organic Community – When I did read it ........................ 146 I knew exactly what it was The Curragh: Why hadn’t anyone told me stories like that existed? .......................... 154 Cré na Cille: A Novel about Novel-writing ................................................................ 167 The Key: The City shouldn’t be left as a Blank Page ................................................. 174 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 180 ii Chapter Five: Introduction: If we cannot move from ‘here’ ...................................... 184 to ‘there’, why not find a better starting point? The Reaffirmation of the Political Community ......................................................... 187 Incarceration and Society ........................................................................................... 191 Another Nowhere: Utopia, Dystopia and Alterity in the writerly production ........... 196 of Joseba Sarrionandia, Máirtín Ó Cadhain and Lluís Maria Xirinacs Enjoyment of the Particular ....................................................................................... 211 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 220 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 224 iii List of Figures Page Figure 1 .................................. 76 Figure 2 .................................. 78 Figure 3 .................................. 114 Figure 4 .................................. 116 Figure 5 .................................. 119 Figure 6 .................................. 123 Figure 7 .................................. 125 Figure 8 .................................. 126 Figure 9 .................................. 136 Figure 10 .................................. 189 Figure 11 .................................. 190 Figure 12 .................................. 191 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the first instance, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost for the continuous support, guidance, encouragement and feedback during the various phases of this thesis. Our discussions, always fruitful and thought- provoking, have been a great help in the development of its overall direction. Secondly, I gratefully acknowledge the funding of the thesis received from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht of the Irish Government. My thanks also go to the Etxepare Basque Institute for facilitating contact with Joseba Sarrionandia and to the Randa Foundation for providing me with electronic documents. I would also like to express my gratitude to the School of Welsh for a research travel grant which enabled me to conduct an interview with Joseba Sarrionandia. My thanks also go to School members (Dr Dylan Foster Evans, Dr Siwan Rosser and Dr Iwan Wyn Rees) who read individual chapters and provided extremely helpful feedback. Likewise, I would like to show my appreciation to all the staff in the School office over the past couple of years who have helped me in numerous ways. Lastly, a special thank you to those who have shared the last couple of years with me in one way or another: He Qi, Josep Vilarrúbies, Menna Cravos, Richard Crowe, Gareth Evans 感谢您为我做的一切, moltes gràcies pels llibres i les converses, diolch yn fawr am y gwmnïaeth a’r ymddiddan. v Chapter One Introduction: Mapping the Modern from Inside and Outside The work of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, ‘the literary sensation of the century’s first decade’, has been described as ‘essaying a history of the present’ (Jelly-Schapiro, 2014: 77). In his writing, he diagnoses the current brutalised condition of human life as an outcome of the implacable reach of the global in late modernity. In a television interview in his native Chile not long before his death in 2003, upon being invited to respond to whether, having lived many decades away from his native Chile, he could still be described as a Chilean writer, he replied: I’d say I’m a Chilean writer, above all one writing against the grain ... the Spanish don’t consider me Spanish ... I’m a Spanish language writer, and dividing up literature on the basis of countries ... with the same language, takes us to the realms of absurdity. Where does Chilean literature come from, does it lie with Alonso de Ercilla, or with Bello? No, it lies with the Quijote, with Cervantes. (House, 2016).1 A number of assertions might be made from the interview. In the first place, we gather that Bolaño accepts the existence of Chilean writers alongside that of writers from other countries. We might then go on to call the panoply of countries existing in the world the ‘international community’, that is to say, countries which make up the international body of nations. The common denominator bringing together these nations, and these nations only, in this international community is that they are sovereign states. In this sense, it might be more exact to name the international community the ‘inter-state community’, with the use of the term ‘inter-state system’ gaining traction in academic or diplomatic circles only. Therefore, when the term ‘international’ is applied to the activity of any nation or group of nations,