Settled in Normal: Narratives of a Prozaic (Spanish) Nation1
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Settled in Normal: Narratives of a Prozaic (Spanish) Nation1 L. Elena Delgado is Associate This private world of loony bins and weird people Professor of Spanish, Criti- which I always felt I occupied and hid in, had sud- cism and Interpretive Theory denly turned inside out so that it seemed like this was at the University of Illinois one big Prozac Nation, one big mess of malaise. (Urbana). A specialist in mod- —Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation ern and contemporary Span- ish literatures and cultures, Me habían dicho que es peligrosísimo dejar el Prozac she is the author of La imagen de golpe, sobre todo si uno ha estado tomándolo elusive: lenguaje y represen- años…y que podía sobrevivir una crisis seria, un epi- tación en la narrativa de Gal- sodio depresivo, que podía sobrevenir un brote dós (2000) and numerous esquizoide…. articles on nineteenth-cen- —Lucía Extebarría, Amor, curiosidad, Prozac y dudas tury literature, decadentism, and modernities. She was also …it is very conceivable that the sense of guilt pro- guest editor of “Imperial Dis- duced by civilization is not perceived as such either, closures” (Discourse: Journal and remains to a large extent unconscious or appears for Theoretical Studies in as a sort of malaise, a dissatisfaction, for which people Media and Culture, 2001) seek other motivations. and Re/Constructions (Jour- —Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents nal of Spanish Cultural Stud- ies, 2003). She is currently n his chapter dedicated to the essay, included in completing a book entitled the Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Cul- “The Normal Nation” on the ture, Thomas Mermall claims that after Franco’s cultural construction of Span- I death the issues of Spain’s national identity and Euro- ish identity. peanization lost their traditionally ontological and metaphysical dimension and acquired a more func- tional character (170). He argues, moreover, that the essay is precisely the genre that stands as concrete proof of Spain’s stable European intellectual location (172). Mermall’s contention, far from being controversial, aptly captures the general tone of recent analysis of Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 7, 2003 120 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Spanish cultural and political identity, In order to attempt to answer some both inside and outside of Spain. Thus, of these questions, we need to turn our for example, noted Spanish historians Juan attention now to some of the titles pub- Pablo Fusi and Jordi Palafox argue that lished in recent years which, in one way when Spain became a member of NATO or another, deal with Spanish cultural (1981) and the European Union (1986), identity or the idea of the nation in Spain: it at long last became Western and Euro- Si España cae…asalto nacionalista al estado, pean, thus resolving the issue of national by César Alonso de los Rios; Nacionalismos: identity (Fusi and Palafox 442). And an- el laberinto de la identidad by Xabier Rubert other equally distinguished historian, de Ventós; España, una angustia nacional Javier Tusell, celebrated in 1999 the fact by Javier Tusell; La novela de España: los that the hagiographies of nationalism were intelectuales y el problema español by Javier in the process of being overcome in the Varela; Tragedia y razón: Europa en el pen- entire Spanish state (243). samiento español del siglo XX by José María If indeed Spaniards can now boast Beneyto; España, reflexiones sobre el ser de of having arrived “where her artists and España, edited by the Royal Academy of intellectuals have long sought so fervently History; España, evolución de la identidad to be—integrally in Europe” (Mermall nacional by Juan Pablo Fusi; La construcción 172) it would seem to be a logical con- de la nación española, by Mario Onaindía. clusion that the “anguish” over national All these essays received wide critical at- identity, so crucial a component of Spain’s tention within Spain and many of them modern intellectual tradition, would have became instant best-sellers. No less suc- ceased to exist. And indeed that is the cessful and publicized are essays that deal conclusion of such a lucid intellectual as more “explicitly” with issues of national- Eduardo Subirats, who remarked in the ism(s) and in particular with the Basque early nineties that in post-Franco Spain and Catalan nationalisms and their inter- “el tema de España,” so widely and bit- actions with the state. I am referring of terly debated in an essentialist and nega- course to works such as Mikel Azurmendi’s tive rhetoric during most of the twenti- La herida patriótica, Xavier Rubert de eth century “se ha dado […] por completa, Ventós’s Catalunya: de la identitat a la rotunda y definitivamente zanjado” (143). independència; Borja de Riquer’s Identitats But if in fact the question of Spain’s contemporanies: Catalunya I Espanya; national identity has now been resolved, Mario Onaindía’s Guía para orientarse en how does one explain the renaissance of el laberinto vasco and the now famous se- the political essay in Spain?2 Why have so ries of essays written by Jon Juaristi on many of those essays become unlikely best- the subject of Basque nationalism and in sellers and elevated their authors to the rank particular his by now classic El bucle of media personalities? And how should melancólico.3 we interpret the renewed prestige of essay Since I mention here only a small awards such as Premio Anagrama de Ensayo, selection of the many essays published on Premio Espasa, Premio Jovellanos or Premio this topic, it is obvious that the sheer num- Nacional de Ensayo, all of which carry sub- ber of existing works points to a need to stantial monetary and cultural capital? “explain” the nation and its evolution. L. Elena Delgado 121 Indeed, it could be argued that the very “indistinguishable” from other European preeminence of the “national debate” in countries, internally the different autono- contemporary Spain reveals precisely that mous communities that constitute the which the contents of the above men- Spanish state are irrevocably different from tioned works often negate: that the idea one another. The very expression chosen of the Spanish Nation or of its cultural in contemporary Spain to denote cultural identity might even today be problem- differences within the state, “hechos dife- atic. It is significant, for example, that the renciales” (“differentiating facts”) points rhetoric used in the very titles of these to a static and hierarchical, rather than works to describe the “Spanish non-prob- malleable and relational understanding of lem” is that same which, according to difference. For “fact” is a word that im- Subirats, had been displaced: labyrinths, plies certitude, immutability. Indeed, in tragedies, anguish, struggle. It could be Spanish the expression “es un hecho” is argued, and rightly so, that the focus of used in contexts that exclude ab initio any many of these books is to re-examine phe- sort of interpretive, ideological or even af- nomena of the past. But then we are faced fective variable. In this sense both the re- with the paradox of a supposedly by gone current claims of normalcy that charac- problem that is nevertheless re-examined terize contemporary analysis of the differ- over and over, in the midst of invocations ent Spanish cultures, as well as the equally to the present Europeanized and “normal- recurrent invocation of a fundamental, ized” status of Spain. From a merely intrinsic difference that disproves any narratological point of view, this imbal- similarity among them, point to an epis- ance points to a common narrative device, temological fissure, to an ambivalence that one by which the impulse driving the is in fact characteristic of all nationalisms narration turns out to be the same one (Nairns 348-49). If, as E. Balibar and oth- which the text eventually disqualifies and ers have demonstrated, the construction annuls. In other words, Spain may want of national subjects can never be void of to represent itself as a completely “nor- tension and contradictions, the insistence mal” European country with an unprob- on the part of Spanish politicians and in- lematic collective identity, but the con- tellectuals on stressing the seamless nor- cept that keeps turning up as the key ele- malcy of the Spanish national identity ment of the national narrative, the one acquires a “prozaic” dimension. By this I sustaining its interest, is precisely that mean that the sources of tension and con- denied yet ever-present “difference.” flict within the national body are not duly It would seem, in fact, that in con- acknowledged and dealt with, but sim- temporary Spain the essentialist use of the ply anesthetized and/or circumscribed to term “difference,” used during Francoism a convenient problematic symptom. to characterize the country as a whole, has Indeed, the narrative mode domi- not been erased, but merely shifted to re- nant in Spain in the 1990s has been said fer only to the “peripheral” (particularly to follow “the poetics of Prozac” due to Basque, Catalan and Galician) nationali- the predominance of an aestheticization ties. That is to say, the consensus seems of personal neurosis and narcissistic ego- to be that while as a nation Spain is now centrism (Fernández Porta). In poetry too 122 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies there is a clear tendency to favor a poetics In general, the representations of of normalcy and “common sense” that re- collective national identities in Spain (both jects all forms of social and stylistic mar- central and peripheral) tend to minimize ginality as extravagant and fosters “a lit- internal tensions and disruptions to fore- erature that is ‘European’ in the most ge- ground cultural (even ethnic) homogene- neric (or least specific) sense of the word” ity and historical continuity.