The Forms of Things Un-Known: Posthumanism(s), and the Utopian Desire Called Hispanidad Machine Age Spain (1880s-1940s)

Abstract

This dissertation explores three representations of "Hispanidad" (Spanishness) as an expression of utopian desire from late 19th and early 20th century Spain. Using posthumanism’s critique of the Western humanist tradition (a tradition that views humanity as a singular, superior, and separate entity in nature), the dissertation critiques that view by exploring utopian representations that constructed critical and alternative perspectives in contrast to the official discourse promoting an essentialist notion of "Hispanidad". According to this discourse, "Hispanidad" was based on a benevolent understanding of Spanish colonialism intimately tied to the landscape of the Castilian plateau and encapsulating a set of characteristics considered innate to the Spanish personality, such as austerity, strength, purity, and industriousness. The dissertation shows how "Hispanidad" was conceived as a utopian desire through three examples that, in different ways and by imagining alternative worlds, examined elements of a given historical moment deemed imperfect. First, I examine the Spanish government’s utopian vision of "Hispanidad" at the 1887 "Exposición General de las Filipinas". In this exhibition, Spain displayed its Filipino colonial people in a human zoo at El Retiro Park, Madrid, paradoxically portraying them as nonhumans with the aim of affirming Spain’s “humane” colonial supremacy. Underlying this event was a perverse utopian impulse to create a space that reflected Spain’s desires for a benevolent and internationally significant colonialism. While this first example shows how utopianism became central to the dominant idea of Hispanidad in the first half of the 20th century, the works analyzed in subsequent chapters deploy utopia as a way to criticize this ideology. I explore Pompeu Gener’s dystopian tale “La coronada villa tentacular” (1911), which subverts the notion of the Castilian plateau as the quintessential landscape of "Hispanidad" by depicting it as a weird, tentacular, and predatory creature that erases other landscapes and other identities within the Iberian Peninsula. Finally, my analysis shifts to post-Civil War Spain with Llorenç Llobet-Gràcia’s film "Vida en sombras" (1948) and the use of the quintessential figure of posthumanism––the cyborg. I explore how the film conceives of the main character, Carlos, as a hybrid of human and technology because of his love of cinema, and how this dual identity serves at once as a figure of resistance and a metaphor that upholds Spain’s regional diversity against the view of "Hispanidad" that Francisco Franco’s dictatorship tried to enforce by promoting a national cinema reflecting his regime’s ideology. Together, these analyses show how utopia was used a means to examine cultural and political narratives of given moments of Spain’s history, illuminating the relationship between ideology, race, and regional identity. The three examples provided are significant not only because they show the intersection between utopia and posthumanism but also because they can also serve, by taking a posthuman approach, as a first step towards understanding our contemporary era.