Archisms in Liberal and Neoliberal Spain: On Death, Dictatorship, and Democracy

Abstract

This dissertation traces the literary ideas and theoretical grounds for the failure of the promises of liberal and neoliberal democracy in contemporary Spain. I analyze the discourses produced on and around the turning points of the Spanish Enlightenment during the last years of the 18th Century, the Constitutions of 1812, 1931, and 1978, as well as the inception of Franco’s dictatorship in 1939. Through close readings of works such as the essays and reports by Melchor G. Jovellanos, the first series of the Episodios Nacionales by Pérez-Galdós, the Desastres de la guerra and the Pinturas negras by Goya, the Letters of Blanco-White, “Día de Difuntos” by Larra, the political discourses of Donoso Cortés and Cánovas del Castillo, Cabrera by Fernández-Santos, Volverás a Región by Juan Benet, and the City of Work by the independent filmmaker Guillermo García-Peydró. By comparing canonical and forgotten literary texts and artistic works, I explain why the so called ‘historical turns’, cultural views, constituent processes, and reënactments of power remain unsolved today. I think of these processes as “archisms,” from arché, which has two related meanings in ancient Greek: origin and rule (still embedded in “archa-ism” and “an-archism”). In combination, these two meanings suggest an arch-foundation of power, a commanding birthright that endures in different sovereign forms of the present: institutions, social structures, inherited knowledge and formations of thought. I make historical events an outrage to the present and make the present an outrage to past promises by juxtaposing works from different periods in order to contest the notion of lineal progress. My approach, while rigorously historical, is also a-chronological – meant to expose the disjointedness of liberal time and to locate the wounds that make the Spanish crisis particularly profound. My dissertation’s innovative focus on liberal and neoliberal times provides an untimely genealogy of democracy in Spain, thus bringing to light a necessary examination of the literary and cultural production in Spain since the late 18th Century, while reactivating the relevance of canonical texts. By showing how literature, film, history, and the visual arts are crucial to a philosophical and political understanding of our social life, this project also intervenes in debates about the human condition and the rethinking of non-egalitarian mechanisms of Western models of democracy.