The Role of Sight in 19Th and 20Th Century (Neo)Realism on the Iberian Peninsula
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Visualizing an Aesthetics of Resistance: The Role of Sight in 19th and 20th Century (Neo)Realism on the Iberian Peninsula by Rachel ten Haaf A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Romance Languages and Literatures: Spanish) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Cristina Moreiras-Menor, Chair Professor Fernando Arenas Professor Michèle A. Hannoosh Professor Ana Paula Ferreira, University of Minnesota Sonnetten voor Cynara (XIV) Rebel, mijn hart, gekerkerd en geknecht, die aan de tralies van de al-dag rukt; weest om uw tijdlijk lot geenszins bedrukt, al zijn de kluisters hard, de muren hecht. Want in de aanvang werd het u voor-zegd, dat het aan enkelen steeds is gelukt het juk te breken, dat hun schouders drukt, laat dus niet af maar vecht en vecht en vecht. Breekt uit en blaast de dove sintels aan, die zijn verdoken onder 't rokend puin; vaart stormgelijk over de lage tuin, die Holland heet; slaat doodlijk toe en snel, opdat het kwaad schrikk'lijk zal ondergaan, o hart, mijn hart, o bloedrode rebel. Jan Campert, 1942 © Rachel Ten Haaf __________________________ All Rights Reserved 2014 A Erika, la felicidad de mi resistencia ii Acknowledgements I am grateful to have had my dissertation research supported financially by the following institutions: the Department of Education’s Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rackham Graduate School and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Cristina Moreiras-Menor has been my advisor from the first day of my program at Michigan. She taught me to read critically and believe in myself, that the best projects involve taking risks, being willing to expose yourself and even make a mistake. Fernando Arenas’s enthusiasm for all things Lusophone and my project in particular has kept me going on the days when it seemed impossible to make the pieces fit together. To him, also, I owe the pleasure of meeting and sharing with someone whose scholarship on Portuguese literature I admire: Ana Paula Ferreira. Last but not least, my thanks to Michèle Hannoosh who has been with this project from its inception and who gave me my first bibliography on 19th century art and photography. Beyond Michigan, I would be remiss not to mention Joyce Tolliver at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who believed in me long before I had any idea what I was getting into. Her kindness both personally and professionally continues to astound me. Also, Cynthia Slagter who introduced me to Spanish history and literature. In Ann Arbor, I thank Barbara Alavarez at the UofM library for her help aquiring materials over the years and Peggy McCracken for her support with fellowship applications. Also, Katie Hayes for helping me with the minefields of bureaucracy. Within and beyond the iii walls of academe, I am grateful for conversations with Javier Entrambasaguas, Pedro Aguilera, Roberto Robles, Roberto Vezzani, Aaron Boalick and other moments shared with Fede (and Jenny, Luna and Iris), Marce (and Leyre and Nico), Tali, Alejandro, Christian, Mara, Silvina, Francheska, Iván and countless others. In Portugal, I thank everyone who supported my research at various moments at the Museu do neo-realismo especially David Santos (and, by extension, Maria Jose Palha). Also the family of César Oliveira along with Fernando Rosas and Paulo Felipe Monteiro at the Universidade Nova as well as everyone at the Cinemateca Nacional. My thanks to Anna Mester, whose passion for the Lusophone world and critically engaging the status quo challenges me to push my thinking harder. And to Emily Thomas who, along with Jacob Canfield, is a person who makes me more thoughtful and aware. Additional thanks to Maria Canal and Angelica Serna for sharing tea and so much more. Thanks to Ashley, Danielle and, especially, Lauren Heidemann for becoming my family when I needed one and to my parents, William and Karen, and my brother, James, who sometimes meet me halfway. Mostly, none of this would have been possible without Erika my fiercely loyal best friend and complice. For the surprise that you continue to be, I am endlessly grateful. iv Preface As I write these words, I am separated from the person who first taught me the meaning of resistance: my father, William M. ten Haaf. Born into a life where he had every reason to become an embittered statistic, he repeatedly chose kindness over violence, service over avarice and love over rejection. Over the past year, I have watched him battle a cancer he knows he will eventually lose with a dignity that is heartbreakingly inspiring. Despite excruciating pain, he has been grateful, patient and, at times, humorous. Although he has no interest in political protests or campaigning and will never see The Old Man and the Sea as anything more than a dreary book about a man on a boat, there would be no dissertation without his constant encouragement, willingness to face his own mistakes and challenges for me to confront my own blindspots. Through his respect for everyone he meets, he has taught me about the equality of human beings regardless of race, gender, class or physical challenges. Thank you for always believing me and believing in me. v Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Preface v List of Figures vii Abstract viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Reality, Revenge and Revelation: Galdós, Goya and the 2nd of May 17 Chapter 2 The Reality of Seeing: Interruptions in the 20th Century Spanish 54 Dictatorship of Francisco Franco An Interruption. Iberian Intersections 108 Chapter 3 Seeing Spaces: Penetrating the 20th Century Portuguese Dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar 113 Conclusion 163 Figures 166 Bibliography 182 vi List of Figures Introduction/Chapter 1 Figure 1.1 166 Figure 1.2 166 Figure 1.3 167 Chapter 2 Figure 2.1 167 Figure 2.2 168 Figure 2.3 169 Figure 2.4 169 Chapter 3 Figure 3.1 170 Figure 3.2 171 Figure 3.3 172 Figure 3.4 173 Figure 3.5 174 Figure 3.6 175 Figure 3.7 176 Figure 3.8 177 Figure 3.9 178 Figure 3.10 179 Figure 3.11 180 Figure 3.12 181 vii Abstract This dissertation examines the ways that realism and later, neo-realism, functioned as a means of aesthetic resistance on the Iberian Peninsula by questioning the role sight played in organizing and controlling perception. In order to address this, I concentrate on two specific moments: the Napoleonic invasion of 1807-8 and the contemporaneous rise of realist aesthetics, and the lengthy twentieth century dictatorships of Spain’s Francisco Franco and Portugal’s Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (and the Estado Novo). I contend that realism became the dominant method of aesthetic resistance because it was linked to a historical moment of resistance, that of the Spanish uprising against the Napoleonic invasion. It was, thus, uniquely capable of exposing and destabilizing the tension between sight as a means of oppressing society through organization and control and as a means of resisting that control by making it visible. In my first chapter, I explore the way Goya and Galdós depicted the events of the 2nd of May Spanish uprising against the Napoleonic invasion in such a way as to question how reliable observation could be in building a national consciousness. In my second chapter, I examine the rise of the corrida as a metaphor for Spanish legitimacy under the regime of Francisco Franco. Through readings of Iganacio Aldecoa’s short stories “Los pozos” and “Caballo de pica” alongside Carlos Saura’s film, Los golfos, I argue that sight becomes the way of undoing this same discourse. Finally, in my third chapter, I look at the way optics functioned as a means of resistance against the Portuguese Estado Novo in the texts of Alves Redol (Gaibeus) and Carlos de Oliveira/Fernando Lopes’s versions of Uma Abelha na Chuva. viii Introduction “Only the awareness of the actual power conditions would enable someone to stand up against the patrons’ wishes…Yet goodness knows what it requires, said Coppi’s mother, to translate knowledge into action.” --Peter Weiss, The Aesthetics of Resistance (62) The eighty-two prints that make up the Desastres de la Guerra by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes were created over a period of ten years (1810-20). They detail the violent events surrounding the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in early 1808 and the subsequent Spanish uprising. Entitled by the author himself as, “Fatales consequencias (sic) de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte (sic), y otros caprichos enfáticos,” they graphically portray beheadings, piles of corpses and the chaos that ruled the streets, emblematizing, “the sober truth about human conflict, that it kills and kills again” (Hughes 289). The etchings together with their captions stand at the intersection between visual and written text as what some call the beginnings of modern photojournalism because they offer “vivid, camera-can’t lie pictorial journalism long before the invention of the camera” (Hughes 272). This connection is vital because it links each piece together while simultaneously allowing for a singular reading. One particular plate, the forty-fourth in the series is captioned, “Yo lo vi.”1 The representation in this plate is at the heart of this dissertation because, as the title indicates, it is a particular meditation on seeing and, in this case, the relationship between visuality 1 Figure 1.1 1 and violence. In this sense “Yo lo vi” can be read as a harbinger of what I argue in the following pages: that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while the sense of sight becamet he primary way for interpreting and controlling the world, simultaneously, the act of seeing through representation began to be tied to acts of resistance.