University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 A Return To The Oikos: The Transformation Of The Home In Modern Spain Sara Lindsey Reuben University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Reuben, Sara Lindsey, "A Return To The Oikos: The Transformation Of The Home In Modern Spain" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2678. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2678 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2678 For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Return To The Oikos: The Transformation Of The Home In Modern Spain Abstract Urban space has increasingly become a topic that has spawned intellectual debate across academic disciplines. In Spain, the cityscape, from the nineteenth century onward, has provided a pivotal backdrop for understanding the configuration of social networks represented in cultural production. At the same time, the city has always been a foundational site of contention: while communities gathered and formed in the realm of the urban center, spaces that consequently settled in the periphery breached deeper notions of exclusion. One of the most depicted spaces of such exclusion has been the urban home. A Return to the Oikos: The Transformation of the Home in Modern Spain considers cultural production of the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth century in Spain that analyzes the home as the exception to the visible domain of politics and labor and, simultaneously, the condition of the production of these categories. This four- chapter study argues that figures such as the mother, the prostitute, the unemployed hetero-normative male, the housekeeper, and the cook bring to bear the invisible functions of capitalist production and national construction that permit and maintain the bourgeois home and material culture in modern Spain. A Return to the Oikos historically transverses the Revolution of 1868, la Gloriosa, the Restoration (1875-1923), Primo de Rivera's regime (1923-1930), the Second Republic (1931-1939), The Civil War (1936-1939), and the isolating years of hunger under the Francoist dictatorship. In doing so, it posits that the home space and the domesticated figures that maintain this space are central and critical components to the possibilities of urbanization, modernization, and ideological shifts, specifically in the Spanish national imaginary from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Through analysis of their representation in literature and film, A Return ot the Oikos places the home at the center of a general social conflict in the larger period of Spanish modernization as deeply intercalated in economic and political fabric. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Ignacio J. López Keywords Domesticity, Hispanic Studies, Labor, Materinity, Shadow Work, Spain Subject Categories Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures | Women's Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2678 A RETURN TO THE OIKOS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HOME IN MODERN SPAIN Lindsey Reuben Muñoz A DISSERTATION in Hispanic Studies For the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation ___________________ Ignacio Javier López Professor of Spanish Graduate Group Chairperson _____________________ Ericka Beckman, Graduate Chair in Hispanic Studies Dissertation Committee Ignacio Javier López, Professor of Spanish Luis Moreno-Caballud, Associate Professor Romance Languages Ericka Beckman, Associate Professor of Romance Languages Elena Cueto-Asín, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures A RETURN TO THE OIKOS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HOME IN MODERN SPAIN COPYRIGHT 2017 Sara Lindsey Reuben This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My work is beholden to many people. First and foremost, I'd like to thank my dear advisor, Ignacio Javier López, for his patient guidance, keen eyes, and above all, his breadth of knowledge. This dissertation would not be complete without his support. I'd also like to show my deep gratitude for my dissertation committee composed of Ignacio, Luis Moreno-Caballud, Ericka Beckman, and Elena Cueto-Asín for reading my work and for offering encouragement throughout my writing process. A special thanks goes to Elena for igniting my love for Spanish literature so many years ago. The structuring and ideas behind my dissertation would not have been possible without the content and stylistic feedback I received during my years at Penn. For this, an additional thanks goes to Toni Espòsito, Michael Solomon, Victoria García-Serrano, Sonia Velázquez, Kate McMahon, and Jorge Téllez. Beyond Penn, Maria DiFrancesco's patience and support make her my professional role model; I am grateful for the time she has spent reading my work and showing me the ropes of the field. Likewise, I am humbly appreciative of conversations and scholarly advice from Teresa Villarós and Cristina Moreiras. My dissertation and my PhD are forever indebted to Javier Velasco as well, whose wisdom and zest for life continue to ground me through the years. The friendships that helped propel my writing process are the motor behind my work. It would be remiss of me not to single out a special few, specifically here in Philadelphia, Carolyn Fornoff and Veronica Brownstone. Carolyn's brilliance and friendship have kept my spirits high and my wine glass full since the day that I arrived at Penn. Veronica's encouragement and thinking inspired me and helped me through many long days in Van Pelt. These two unstoppable women, along with Agnese Codebò, iii Cristina Pérez, Bret Maney, Joan Aguirre, Peter Schmidt-Nowara, Michelle Iturrate, Camila Moreiras, Esther Alarcón, Pablo Dominguez, Nyasa Hickey, Rose Horn, Derek Beaudry, Kristen Turpin, Dana Khromov, Laura Barron, and Amy Montgomery are not only dear friends, but scholars, artists, teachers, and thinkers who in such diverse ways offered me the support system that I needed to be writing these words. The same can be said of the graduate students at UPenn and Columbia University, including Diana Eguía- Armenteros, Ignasi Gonzalo, Xavi Dapena, Kristina Mitchell, Steve Dolph, Isabel Díaz Alanís, Wendy Muñíz and Noel Blanco Mourelle. When writing on the home, my mind will always wonder back to Lynn Lobell, Marc Lobell, Jonathan Lobell, Elliot Lobell, Allison Maroney and to our warm dinners in my home away from home in Flushing and then Sunnyside, Queens. My brother, Michael Reuben, my grandmother, Ellen Michelson, and my sisters, Cara Liguori and Kelly Kaso have granted me boundless love that seeps deep within these pages. They help me optimistically imagine a future of care and support that I hope to continue pursuing in an intellectual capacity. Words do not suffice in thanking my parents, Joan and Steve Reuben, for the home that they have given me. Their bond and endless love inspire these pages. Last but not least, I am indebted to my life partner, Gerardo Muñoz, for his brilliance and for his love. He is unique, encouraging, and genuine. By his side, I know I am home. iv ABSTRACT A RETURN TO THE OIKOS: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HOME IN MODERN SPAIN Lindsey Reuben Muñoz Ignacio Javier López Urban space has increasingly become a topic that has spawned intellectual debate across academic disciplines. In Spain, the cityscape, from the nineteenth century onward, has provided a pivotal backdrop for understanding the configuration of social networks represented in cultural production. At the same time, the city has always been a foundational site of contention: while communities gathered and formed in the realm of the urban center, spaces that consequently settled in the periphery breached deeper notions of exclusion. One of the most depicted spaces of such exclusion has been the urban home. A Return to the Oikos: The Transformation of the Home in Modern Spain considers cultural production of the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth century in Spain that analyzes the home as the exception to the visible domain of politics and labor and, simultaneously, the condition of the production of these categories. This four- chapter study argues that figures such as the mother, the prostitute, the unemployed hetero-normative male, the housekeeper, and the cook bring to bear the invisible functions of capitalist production and national construction that permit and maintain the bourgeois home and material culture in modern Spain. A Return to the Oikos historically transverses the Revolution of 1868, la Gloriosa, the Restoration (1875-1923), Primo de Rivera's regime (1923-1930), the Second Republic (1931-1939), The Civil War (1936- v 1939), and the isolating years of hunger under the Francoist dictatorship. In doing so, it posits that the home space and the domesticated figures that maintain this space are central and critical components to the possibilities of urbanization, modernization, and ideological shifts,