Telling Memories: Narratives of Haunting and Mourning in the Contemporary Spanish Novel

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Telling Memories: Narratives of Haunting and Mourning in the Contemporary Spanish Novel Telling Memories: Narratives of Haunting and Mourning in the Contemporary Spanish Novel Judith Moira Meddick Royal Holloway, University of London Doctor of Philosophy Abstract This thesis explores the representation of the memory of the civil war in four contemporary novels: La sombra del viento [The Shadow of the Wind] (2001) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Soldados de Salamina [Soldiers of Salamis] (2001) by Javier Cercas, El lápiz del carpintero [The Carpenter’s Pencil] (1998) by Manuel Rivas and El hijo del acordeonista [The Accordionist’s Son] (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga. The thesis argues that these novels address the legacy of the memory of the war wrought by the disremembrance of history during the Spanish Transition and make a vital contribution to the construction of a collective cultural memory of the civil war and Franco era. In particular, each novel represents and forms part of the emergence of private memories of the war and post-war period into the public sphere during the resurgence of memory in Spain from around 1998. The thesis focuses on the idea of a haunting past created by the Transition’s political and psychic rupture with recent history. Through theorised readings of the novels — including Abraham and Torok’s concept of trans-generational haunting, the idea of melancholia as culturally prohibited, inexpressible mourning developed by Judith Butler and Abraham and Torok after Freud, Jacques Derrida’s conceptualisation of history as hauntology and Giorgio Agamben’s notion of politically denuded bare life — the thesis investigates several aspects of the return of memory: the re-emergence of the past in public consciousness, the creation of a new historical narrative, the reconfiguration of Spain’s collective memory about the civil war and Franco era, along with its link to pan-European memory debates, and the production of a space for mourning through the inscription of Republican losses in the public sphere. Especially, the thesis highlights how the novels reflect the trans-generational transmission of memories. 2 Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………...……. 2 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….. 6 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 7 The erasure of Republican memories…………………………………………… 11 Spain’s break with the past in the Transition…………………………………… 13 A new political memory……………………………………………………….... 15 Disremembering in lieu of forgetting…………………………………………… 19 Spain’s acceleration into modernity…………………………………………….. 25 The return of the silenced past to public discourse……………………………... 26 The reconfiguration of Spain’s collective memory…………………………….. 30 The structure of the thesis………………………………………………………. 41 Chapter One: Trans-generational haunting in La sombra del viento [The Shadow of the Wind] (2001) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón………………..…………. 45 Introduction……………………………………………………………............... 45 Trauma theories……………………………………………………………......... 46 Trans-generational haunting…………………………………………………….. 51 The psychic burial of the silenced past………………………………………….. 55 An historical arrest of mourning………………………………………………… 58 The collective constitution of the “phantom” and the “crypt”………………….. 59 Bearing witness to repressed histories…………………………………………... 63 Synopsis…………………………………………………………………………. 66 Critical reception………………………………………………………………... 67 The return of the traumatic past in the generation after………………………… 73 Internally excluded memories…………………………………………………... 79 The reclamation of the past in the present………………………………………. 82 Conclusion………………………………………………………..……………... 89 3 Chapter Two: Melancholia and the telling of history in Soldados de Salamina [Soldiers of Salamis] (2001) by Javier Cercas…………………………………......... 91 Introduction………………………………………………………..…………..... 91 Melancholia keeps the past internally alive……………………………………... 92 The rehabilitation of melancholia……………………………………………….. 95 Incorporation in place of introjection…………………………………………… 98 Melancholia: culturally prohibited mourning…………………………………..100 Post-colonial melancholia………………………………………………………102 Synopsis………………………………………………………..……………….112 Critical reception………………………………………………………………..113 The melancholic narrator……………………………………………………… 121 A personal reproduction of a public disremembrance………………………… 127 The seeming victimhood of a victor…………………………………………... 130 A kitsch reading of the death of memory……………………………………… 131 A manic reconstruction…………………………………………………………132 The dual aspect of the Transition…………………………………………….... 134 Melancholy becomes mourning……………………………………………….. 136 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...140 Chapter Three: History as hauntology in El lápiz del carpintero [The Carpenter’s Pencil] (1998) by Manuel Rivas………………………………... 142 Introduction………………………………………………………..…………... 142 History as hauntology…………………………………………………………. 144 Hauntology questions the certainty of the present…………………………….. 147 Spectres return ‘other’ historical knowledge………………………………….. 149 The transformative work of the spirit…………………………………………. 151 The spirit is about a search for justice…………………………………………. 153 Synopsis………………………………………………………..……………… 156 Critical reception………………………………………………………..……... 157 The spectre transmutes melancholia into mourning…………………………... 165 The return of absent historical narratives……………………………………… 167 The disremembrance of the spectre…………………………………………… 172 The residues of the Francoist past in the present……………………………… 175 Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………… 180 4 Chapter Four: Memory as bare life in El hijo del acordeonista [The Accordionist’s Son] (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga……………………………. 181 Introduction………………………………………………………..………….. 181 From biopolitics to bare life…………………………………………………… 182 The figure of the homo sacer………………………………………………….. 185 Synopsis………………………………………………………..……………… 190 Critical reception………………………………………………………..……... 191 Reviewing bare life memories………………………………………………….200 From bare life to political life…………………………………………………. 211 Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………… 216 Conclusion………………………………………………………..…………………. 217 Bibliography………………………………………………………..……………….. 229 5 Acknowledgements I wish to thank Royal Holloway, University of London; Funds for Women Graduates and President’s Fund, Edinburgh Association of University Women for financial support for research and writing this thesis. I am also deeply grateful for the financial contribution and constant encouragement I received from my late father, Leonard John Meddick. I am indebted to my family and friends who supported me over the course of the project, especially Haydn Meddick, David Meddick and Sara Williams. My particular thanks go to Paul and Michèle Whitehead for their advice, support and encouragement, especially during the difficult stages of writing. I thank Robin Kirby for reading various bits of work and advice about keeping going. I owe considerable thanks to many people who helped me at Royal Holloway. I am grateful to Professor Colin Davis for an important early suggestion about ethics. I also wish to thank Professor Abigail Lee Six for various pieces of advice and comments. In addition, I thank Professor Helen Graham for her support and encouragement. I am truly grateful to Professor James Williams for his academic input in the later stages of the project. In particular, I give my profound thanks to Professor Sarah Wright for her academic supervision, stalwart support and for helping me to clarify the various strands of the thesis. As well, I benefited from attending the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. At Royal Holloway I am utterly grateful to my thesis adviser Professor Robert Eaglestone for his enthusiasm and insightful comments throughout. Finally, I record my deep gratitude to the late Professor David Vilaseca for his academic supervision, his shrewdness and generosity. An earlier version of Chapter One appeared as ‘The Telling of Memory in La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón’, in Romance Studies 28.4 (November 2010): 246-58. 6 Introduction This thesis explores the representation of the memory of the Spanish Civil War in four contemporary novels: La sombra del viento [The Shadow of the Wind] (2001) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Soldados de Salamina [Soldiers of Salamis] (2001) by Javier Cercas, El lápiz del carpintero [The Carpenter’s Pencil] (1998) by Manuel Rivas and El hijo del acordeonista [The Accordionist’s Son] (2003) by Bernardo Atxaga. The thesis argues that these novels address the legacy of the memory of the civil war wrought by the disremembrance of history during the Spanish Transition and make a vital contribution to the construction of a collective cultural memory of the war and Franco era.1 In particular, each novel represents and forms part of the emergence of private memories of the war and post-war period into the public sphere during the resurgence of memory in Spain — the so-called “memory boom” — from around 1998.2 Through theorised readings of these novels, the thesis investigates several aspects of the return of memory: the re-emergence of the past in public consciousness, the creation of a new historical narrative, the reconfiguration of Spain’s collective memory about the civil war and Franco era, along with its link to pan-European memory debates, and the production of a space for mourning through the inscription of Republican losses in the public sphere. Especially, the thesis highlights how the novels reflect the trans-generational transmission of memories. Drawing on the concept of the memory of the civil war as a haunting past produced by the Transition’s political and psychic rupture with recent history, the thesis explores
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