Locating Female Subjectivity and Resistance in the Spanish University
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Mis(s) Education: Locating Female Subjectivity and Resistance in the Spanish University A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Spanish Literature by Amanda Birmingham Committee in charge: Professor Martin Luis-Cabrera, Chair Professor Pamela Radcliff Profeseor Rosaura Sánchez 2008 © Amanda Birmingham, 2008 All rights reserved. The thesis of Amanda Birmingham is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2008 iii Dedicated to Dr. Soñia Riquelme 1945 – 2008 iv “¿Qué ha de aprender una chica en la universidad? Ir por el mal camino, el mal camino y nada más” – Abuela Lucia, Julia v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………………………………………............... iii Dedication ………………………………………………………………………......... iv Epigraph ……………………………………………………………………………… v Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………….......... vi Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………….. vii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………........ viii Preliminary Remarks…………….…………………………………………………… 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….….. 5 Nada ……………………………………………………………………..……….....… 22 Julia …… ………………………………………………………………………............ 51 El mismo mar de todos los veranos ……………………….……………….……......... 94 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….... 118 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………......... 127 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my most sincere gratitude to the people many who have helped make this project a success; Thank you Dr. Martin-Cabrera for your patience and invaluable guidance as chair of my committee. To Mom, Dad and Jeremiah – you are not just family, but my best friends and I thank you for always nurturing my imagination and reminding me what opportunities an education can provide. To Tony, thank you for your unyielding encouragement throughout this long process – I love you and can not wait to marry you. And to Tina and Nicole, thank you for your advice about life before and after the M.A. thesis defense. The list of those contributing to this project is infinite and even if not listed here, you know you who you are. I appreciate and am indebted to you all! vii ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Mis(s) Education: Locating Female Subjectivity and Resistance in the Spanish University by Amanda Birmingham Master of Arts in Spanish Literature University of California, San Diego, 2008 Professor Luis Martin-Cabrera, Chair This project uses Althusserian concepts of interpellation and subject formation with Foucaultian notions of power and discourse to explore the university space under the Francoist regime as represented in three novels by Spanish women writers; Nada by Carmen Laforet (1945), Julia by Ana Maria Moix (1968) and El mismo mar de todos los veranos by Esther Tusquets (1978). By taking up the case of female protagonists who bring their search for identity to the university, I argue that the scholar identity serves as a site of resistance to the ideological hold of the state, where through a subversive learning process under a female pedagogue, the university experience serves as a public framework by which the protagonists produce knowledge of the exploitative power relations governing women’s social position. Analysis of these literary works shows the process of performing the female scholar identity as one rupturing the viii hegemonic status of National-Catholic ideology by facilitating the protagonists’ unlearning of themselves as the means of reproduction in service to the modern state. These findings also identify patriarchal morality and classist restrictions on women as interrelated factors in the subjugation of women. ix PRELIMINARY REMARKS Spanish literature has never suffered a dearth of female authors, but with few exceptions, until recently their contributions to the Spanish canon have gone largely unrecognized. Only after the Civil War did Spanish women begin to gain visibility in the traditionally male-dominated sphere of literary production (Molinaro 13). Even then, women authors who found publishers willing to print their work subjected their creations to oppressive censorship by the state and patriarhcal social norms purporting diminutive female intellectual capacities, leaving literature written by women to be “judged inferior, ignored or marginalized into a subcategory established solely on the basis of gender” (13). However, since the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, and the slow process towards liberalizing gender relations initiated thereafter, Spanish women writers have been attracting the increasing attention of critics at home and abroad. The novels to be treated in this project, Nada by Carmen Laforet published in 1945, Julia by Ana Maria Moix published in 1969 and El mismo mar de Todos los Veranos by Esther Tusquests published in 1978, are three such cases. Within the growing emphasis on women writers, these works have been the topic of numerous critical studies: Marsha Collins, for example, links the form of Nada with a search for identity while Elizabeth Ordóñez emphasizes the importance of the family paradigm in the novel as a reflection of Spain’s post-civil war social values (Johnson 249). Approaches to Moix, like those of Bush and Levine, include the concept of doubling and struggle between silence and discourse (Levine Spanish 344-5). And although the most recent of these authors to publish her first novel, Tusquets has already inspired 1 2 much scholarship, like that of Bellver, Molinaro, and Levine who read her works against established literary canons and ideologies of power (Servodidio Spanish 502). However, despite the myriad of approaches to the texts, there exists a significant lack of studies treating the role of the university in these novels and how it plays into intersections of power, knowledge, resistance and the subsequent (changing) female subjectivities within that space. Including the university space in critical analysis is imperative to our understanding of the Spanish female experience as presented in literature because that institution of leaning served as an ideological battleground throughout twentieth century Spain; as a site in which resistance to the regime’s totalitarian revisionist project came into direct contact with forces designed to instill and perpetuate conservative National-Catholic ideology imposed by the state (Gómez 53). In an effort to correct that gap in existing criticism, the novels of this project have been chosen primarily on the common thread of female protagonists whose interface with the university frames their shared concerns of female voice, identity and alienation during key stages in the Spanish dictatorship and democratic transition. Furthermore, while Laforet, Moix and Tusquets have each been recognized individually for her contribution to the body of Spanish literature, to my knowledge, this combination of their works has not yet been studied together. The benefit in doing so is the ability to observe how the common concerns of the protagonists and representations of the university they attend compare across the thirty-three year historical trajectory in which they were written. A second benfit in treating Nada , Julia and El mismo mar as a triad is the opportunity to disabuse the prevelance of a debilitating literary trend Margarent Jones has identified in works of female noveleists 3 of the later post-war years. According to Jones, in lieu of earlier novels that present political history as macrocosms for the personal histories of their protagonists, the result of which locates said protagoisnts in situations that transcend “lo personal (sea nacional, social, existential o universal),” female novelists of the later post-war years have abandoned preoccupation with social protest for exhaulted individualism: No hay las mismas preocupaciones socials de reforma o de protesta ante la injusticia del mundo. La novela se interioriza y el enfoque se reduce al tamaño del individuo: problemas particulares suplantan al antiguo interés social. La presentación es más bien intimista, concentrándose en un individuo único y su perspectiva sobre la vida…La rebelión de la nueva heroína no pasa de lo personal. (“Compromiso” 132-3) The egotism of this later generation, she finds, occludes the narrative space to reflect on the historical moment of production. But by studying Nada , Julia and El mismo mar together, we see that what these texts share in content is also what makes them exceptions to the trend Jones outlines. The search for self is central to each of the novels (as it is imperative to explore the self as a site of rebellion since the internalization of ideology through processes of subject formation is precisely what aids in making hegemony so elusive), but that search for self is framed by interface with public institutions. And as we will see, the protagonists do rebel within lo personal , yet contrary to the perceived limitations such rebellion has for social protest , the protagonists do so by occupying public spaces of learning, a strategic setting that facilitates a parallel narrative of student resistance and changes within the university climate of the historical moment. Thus, instead of a generational trend of authors substituting critical social commentary for “una nueva promoción femenina” focused on the body and the individual, we find the authors of 4 these particular works to to be directing social commentary in multiple directions: inwards to the private sphere