TRANSOCEANIC STUDIES Ileana Rodríguez, Series Editor All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. IN SEARCH OF AN ALTERNATIVE BIOPOLITICS ANTI-BULLFIGHTING, ANIMALITY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN CONTEMPORARY SPAIN KATARZYNA OLGA BEILIN THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. Copyright © 2015 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beilin, Katarzyna Olga, 1966– author. In search of an alternative biopolitics : anti-bullfighting, animality, and the environment in contemporary Spain / Katarzyna Olga Beilin. pages cm — (Transoceanic studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1290-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Bullfights—Political aspects—Spain—21st century. 2. Animal rights—Spain—21st century. 3. Biopolitics—Spain—21st century. I. Title. II. Series: Transoceanic studies. GV1108.7.M67B45 2015 791.8'2—dc23 2015025468 Cover design by James A. Baumann Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. For Sai All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. CONTENTS List of Illustrations • ix Acknowledgments • xi Preface • xv INTRODUCTION Bulls, Apes, Genes, and Clouds • 1 CHAPTER 1 Bullfighting Biopolitics and Debates on National Culture • 49 CHAPTER 2 Anti-Bullfighting Activists as Marginal Intellectuals • 78 CHAPTER 3 Science, Politics, and Animals: Tiempo de Silencio as an Anti-Bullfighting Novel • 106 CHAPTER 4 Meanings of Animalization and Humanity as Anthropomorphism • 129 CHAPTER 5 Animal Rights Movement for an Alternative Biopolitics • 159 CHAPTER 6 Bullfighting and the War on Terror: Debates on Culture and Torture in Spain, 2004–11 • 187 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. viii CONTENTS CHAPTER 7 Die or Laugh: Biopolitical Crisis in Biutiful and Nocilla experience • 211 CHAPTER 8 Debates on GMOs in Spain and Rosa Montero’s Lágrimas en la lluvia (with Sainath Suryanarayanan) • 235 CONCLUSION In Search of Alternative Biopolitics • 262 Works Cited • 273 Index • 297 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE I.1 Activists of Fundacion Ecuanimal and WSPA-International in Bilbao • 2 FIGURE 1.1 Cover of Eugenio Noel’s La novela de un pueblo en capea • 56 FIGURE 5.1 Cartoon from El País, by Forges: “Señas/Sañas de identidad” • 161 FIGURE 5.2 Activists at the International Day of Animal Rights, Plaza Sol, Madrid • 172 FIGURE 5.3 An activist crying over a dead piglet during the International Day of Animal Rights, Plaza Sol, Madrid • 173 FIGURE 5.4 Alaska poses in front of the poster designed by Juan Gatti, “La verdad al desnudo; Tauromaquia es cruel” (The Naked Truth: Bullfighting Is Cruel) • 176 FIGURE 5.5 “Eau de toroture” by Albert Riera • 180 FIGURE 7.1 Wet stain growing on the ceiling of Uxbal’s room • 217 • ix • All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. x ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 7.2 Screenshot from Biutiful showing smokestakes of Sant Adrià de Besòs • 217 FIGURES 7.3A AND B Comparison between Uxbal’s body and the city • 221 FIGURE 7.4 A shark made of hundred-euro bills • 222 FIGURE C.1 Ramón Rodríguez’s vision of the king’s abdication • 264 All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THIS BOOK owes its existence to many humans and nonhumans, but it would not have been conceived without Sai, who gave me ideas, convictions, and strength. He is also a coauthor of the last chapter of this book, whose some- what different version had been written by both of us as an article for Hispanic Issues, but also helped me think through various other sections. Nothing would have been possible without children: Felix, whose moral strength has kept our family vegetarian, and Mundo, whose emotional strength keeps us in peace. I am grateful to my parents, Barbara and Wiesław Szymczyk, for continuous support, for taking care of the boys while I wrote, and for being great friends. Additionally, I could not have finished the manuscript without the gen- erous, friendly, and instructive editorial help of Nancy Soth, from whom I learned a lot. Jorge Riechmann, Paula Casal, Joaquín Araujo, Pablo de Lora, Oscar Horta, Fernando Turró, Carmen y Manel Cases, Albert Riera, and the activists of Ecuanimal, Igualdad Animal, and ADDA taught me how to think about their struggle for an alternative biopolitics and how to understand it in a Spanish context. I feel an intellectual debt and gratitude for their time and thoughts. I need to say “thank you” to Andrea Gutiérrez, Alberto Martínez Rivas, and Ángela Montenegro for helping me to establish contacts in Barce- lona. I am very grateful to Juan Egea, Luis Martín-Estudillo, John Beusterien, • xi • All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sebastiaan Faber, Jorge Riechmann, Paula Casal, Oscar Horta, Glen Close, and Mario Santana for the invaluable feedback they gave me on the manu- script or its parts. Thanks to Robert Nixon, Steven Hutchinson, Susan Fried- man, and Michael Ugarte for supporting this project and helping me find grants to pursue it. I also need to express my gratitude to the Institute for Research in the Humanities, the Center for European Studies, and the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as the Spanish Ministry of Culture for honoring me with the grants and stipends that made my research and writing possible. Thanks to Ecuanimal for permission to use the photograph of the performance in front of Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, to Albert Riera for his ingenious image of “Eau de Toroture,” and to Antonio Fraguas Forges for permission to use his drawing of “Se/añas de identidad.” Thanks to John Beusterien for the antic edition of Eugenio Noel’s novel, whose front cover became one of my illustrations. Thanks to Hanwen Dong for his mira- cles in editing images. Thanks to the International Journal of Iberian Studies, to Comparative Drama, and to Hispanic Issues for permission to republish parts of the articles formerly printed in each. I also want to say “thank you” to the graduate students from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, whose contributions to the seminar discussions helped me think through this book. In particular, I am indebted to Daniel Ares López, Marilén Loyola, Joseph Patteson, and Jenny Jeong from whom I learned things that made it into this book. I began to think about Anthropocene during the discussions of the Fac- ulty Seminar on Environmental Humanities led by Rob Nixon, who became my role model as an intellectual activist who fights for a better world by tell- ing stories of other fights. To an extent, my book attempts to follow this path. I have benefited intellectually from the exchanges during an Animal Stud- ies Mellon Workshop led by Mario Ortiz in 2012. The writing collaborations that I have developed while working on this book with William Viestenz, Eugenia Afinoguenova, Luis Prádanos-García (Iñaki), Carmen Flys, Susan Larson, Matthew Feinberg, John Threvatan, Paul Begin, Sebastiaan Faber, Daniel Ares, Pablo de Lora, Tonia Raquejo, John Beusterien, Luis Martín- Estudillo, and Nicolas Spadaccini have been enormously stimulating and made work a joy. Finally, I want to say “thanks” to my department’s consecu- tive chairs Rubén Medina and Luis Madureira for creating a wonderful intel- lectual atmosphere for research. Among the nonhumans, my thanks go to the squirrels that chase each other through the trunks of the trees in my garden and across the electric wires as if they were still on tree branches, to the cardinals that sit at the rail- ing of my terrace looking at me with one eye, and to a humming bird that All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii appears like a hallucination over some flowers to disappear before anyone else sees him. I need to acknowledge bunnies that live under the terrace and eat our tulips and move their noses in a very funny way, the neighbor’s cat, Krystynka, who would live with us if she could, the wasps in the window frame that never stung, and the generous maples that give me millions of leaves to rake and a hiding place for my little boy in the fall. Finally, thanks to the prairie in Hoyt Park were best ideas always come to my mind. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © The Ohio State University Press, 2015. Batch 1. PREFACE “Pensamiento renovador es siempre minoritario.” —Joaquín Araujo EACH TIME I am carried away with enthusiasm, thinking that I am writing a book on a significant change that is taking place in Spanish contemporary culture, I remember my conversation with Jorge Riechmann, one of the most important intellectual leaders of this change. When I asked him about the cultural significance of the transformation, he looked at me seriously and said that change is affecting less than one percent of society, though that one percent think that they are the ninety-nine percent. In his opinion, a new understanding of the world that comes together with the awareness of the need to change happens only in microworlds of new social movements narcissistically constructed around their own websites, whose links to other microworlds are not frequently used.