Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture

By Yaw Agawu-Kakraba

Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture attempts a concise approach to the question of postmodernity in Spain since the advent of democracy. The study presents Spain as one of the most postmodern of all European nations and argues that exclusive social and cultural experiences such as the movida, the desencanto, political pasotismo, immigration, globalization, and terrorism are not only patently Spanish but also that in their totality, they constitute a powerful postmodern current in Spain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781783164097

Yaw Agawu-Kakraba

Yaw Agawu-Kakraba is Professor of Spanish at Pennsylvania State University.

Book preview

Introduction

Towards a Theoretical Exploration of Postmodernity in Spain

Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture remedies a critical gap that exists within Spanish literary criticism regarding the urgency to define and to identify what really constitutes postmodernity within the Spanish context. A genuine debate about this phenomenon has been lacking because of the tendency of some critics to dismiss postmodernity’s existence on the Peninsula. Most of those academic endeavours that engage postmodernity and postmodernism in Spain fail to connect these two phenomena to those exclusive social and cultural experiences that are patently Spanish. Such studies only emphasize postmodernity as social and economic conditions of a Spain of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and postmodernism as a lifestyle experience, a manifestation of new cultural and artistic practices that emerged in the 1950s. In arguing in this study that the political pasotismo that preceded and coincided with the movida and desencanto constitute a postmodern condition that extends to the present, Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture marks a shift from studies that have sought to limit these socio-cultural experiences to the mid 1980s and to the early 1990s. In positing Spain as a nation that has undergone postmodernity and is still experiencing what can be considered full-blown postmodernity, this book advances the discussion of this social phenomenon by entering into a dialogue with previous oppositional and questioning voices in the field in order to provide a more nuanced and fresher look at Spain. Most importantly, however, the authors and the works studied in this book draw out the kinds of postmodern strategies needed within the realm of democratic politics in Spain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A strategy of creative struggle is evident as the authors engage in artistic performative actions designed to confront some of the challenges that face Spain as one of the most industrialized nations in today’s Europe.

Postmodernity and postmodernism are as two indispensable socio-cultural phenomena in Spain. To facilitate this claim, the study relates to social and cultural circumstance that are unmistakably Spanish: (a) the advent of the movida that surfaced on the cultural scene of the 1980s in cities including Seville, Madrid, Vigo, Barcelona, Bilbao, and in Spain as a whole in reaction to economic prosperity and new sexual freedom;¹ (b) desencanto, a state of mind generated from dissatisfaction with a free-market and liberal democratic system, considered as an alternative to the previous Francoist socio-economic policies; the nihilism and ennui that marked the identity of the youth toward the end of the millennium because of the loss of faith in the rewards of the economic boom of the 1980s and mid-1990s; and (c) current conditions in Spain, where immigration, globalization and terrorism have become key national issues that have provoked an intense discussion regarding the country’s role within the European Union and its position on the world stage at large.

Scholars in the field of Spanish cultural studies have turned to postmodernism in discussion on the complex period of Spanish history and the cultural production that materialized after Franco’s death in 1975. Nevertheless, a critical consensus about the nature of postmodernism and its impact in Spain has yet to materialize because of the propensity of some critics to underemphasize, trivialize and denigrate the existence of an at times vibrant and particularly Spanish postmodernism.² These critics have done so for a variety of reasons, but there seem to be two chief occludences that provoke their mis-analyses. The first is a mostly theoretical problem: in relying on primarily French poststructuralist and late-Marxist definitions of postmodernism, they are unable to appreciate the ways in which Spanish culture developed the fragmentarity that is at the core of successful postmodernism and postmodernity (the latter being a reaction engendered and enabled by the former).³ Critics who commit the second error in relying on the commonly agreed ‘canon’ to define the limits of their critique of Spanish culture, have produced an a priori unitary world of evidence. Consequently, they cannot evaluate the new ways in which peninsular authors are interacting with the fast-changing world. This study is in response to these critics in three ways. First, I examine the works of scholars such as Miguel Cereceda, Alfonso Sastre, Malcolm Compitello and others who argue for a Spain that is only incompletely modern in an effort to strip away the ideology-ridden lens with which they have studied Spain’s postmodernism. Second, in my movida and desencanto chapters (1, 2, and 3), I study the way in which difference has been celebrated and anomie developed until they have both become not just vibrant new responses to the hegemonic discourses of recidivist Francoism but viable ways of living free lives. Third, by incorporating a non-canonical genre such as science fiction in this study, I seek to add another dimension to the debate that has hitherto been overlooked.

The postmodern debate in Spain was prompted by Borja Casani’s and José Tono Martínez’s 1984 feature article in La luna de Madrid. Titled ‘Madrid 1984 ¿La posmodernidad?’, the study sought to hypothesize the link between the movida and postmodernism. They asserted that Spain had already undergone modernization: rapid growth of delayed modernization in political democratization and social-infrastructural expansion of civil society. They contended that the conditions framing the Madrid of the 1980s and, consequently, those of Spain in general, reflect a postmodernist culture.

The passionate debate that quickly arose in response to this article produced two camps: those who believed that it was possible and intellectually acceptable to apply North American and European theoretical models of postmodernism to Spain, and those who vehemently challenged the notion of a postmodern Spain. In response to this debate, Tono Martínez and Huerga Murcia edited a collection of essays, La polémica de la posmodernidad (1986), to discuss postmodernity in Spain from a critical perspective.⁴ In their prologue to the book, they observe a lack of critical engagement with postmodernity on the Peninsula. They cite the example of critics who, although initially applauding postmodernity in the press, began sounding its death knell in the late 1980s and 1990s. Aside from the use and abuse of the term, what is most troubling for Tono Martínez and Huerga Murcia is the inability of Spanish critics to provide insights that explore seriously the concepts and formulations of postmodern thought (1986, p. 9). Postmodernity in Spain, they observe, has been deployed to lump together indiscriminately the most diverse art forms and styles. As a result, the word has come to signify everything that is ‘new,’ ranging from a piece of clothing, a fashionable location, or the supposed resurgence of a city. Although the editors’ stated goal is to advance the debate about postmodernity by providing a forum for a more balanced and rigorous analysis of the phenomenon, most of the essays in La polémica de la posmodernidad reiterate exhausted claims that postmodernity is non-existent as a cultural reality on the Peninsula.⁵ Two essays from this book illustrate the point.

In Miguel Cereceda’s ‘La falsa superación de la modernidad’ the author takes Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard to task for ‘playing language games’ without providing what Cereceda believes are convincing and concrete evidence that the ‘grand narratives’ that Lyotard attacks have lost their capability to legitimize knowledge and to emancipate political practices. A staunch defender of modernity, Cereceda underlines his belief in the foundational premise of Enlightenment as the cornerstone of transforming the world through rationality. Cereceda acknowledges Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s analysis of contemporary western society in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. In this work, the theorists develop an extensive and more pessimistic concept of Enlightenment by exposing its dark side as they attempt to abolish superstition and myths by foundationalist philosophy. Cereceda, nonetheless, censures these two critics for considering reason as the exclusive means through which one can attain goals, even if reason strips itself of the right to discuss these goals. The end result, Cereceda believes, is the legitimization of the use of reason for the achievement of whatever goal is possible. Cereceda contends that because of their lack of awareness of this regressive moment of reason, both Adorno and Horkheimer abandoned reason to its own fate which, to some extent, is the same thing that Lyotard does by attempting to renounce critical activity and lucidity (1986, pp. 238–9). Cereceda submits that

si la superación de la modernidad, si el programa ideológico de la postmodernidad no es más que esta sentencia de muerte contra la razón y los discursos emancipatorios que ella alumbraba, tampoco la postmodernidad pasará de ser una resignación abstracta a la contemplación caótica de un mundo. (1986, p. 239)

[if the defeat of modernity, if the ideological program of postmodernity is nothing more than the death sentence against reason and the liberating discourses that modernity illuminated, then postmodernity cannot become an abstract resignation of the chaotic contemplation of a world.]

Although Cereceda does not acknowledge it, a Habermasian viewpoint of the Enlightenment enables him to adhere to the doctrine of modernity. In Jürgen Habermas’s exchange on the topic of modernity with Lyotard, the former argued that the project of modernity, entrenched in the context of Enlightenment rationality, was still incomplete and required completion. Lyotard countered by suggesting that modernity has, in fact, been obliterated by history, a history whose tragic model was the Nazi concentration camp and whose final deligitimizing might was that of capitalist ‘technoscience’ which has altered radically our concepts of knowledge. Lyotard debunks, therefore, Enlightenment rationality’s totalizing grand narrative designed to be the foundation of critical ideas: freedom, democracy and reason, which constitute the fundamental principles of a society. Instead, he advocates a postmodernity that shuns grand totalizing narratives. Smaller and multiple narratives that seek no universalizing stabilization or legitimation become Lyotard’s model.

The problem with Cereceda’s notion of modernity is twofold. The first is his refusal or inability to debate what Lyotard (1984) calls the ‘irreducible plurality’ of language games, a plurality that contains its own ‘local’ rules, legitimations, and practices. Such a refusal to accept this plurality of discourses leads to Cereceda’s scathing attack of Luis Brea’s study, ‘Afterpunk y posmodernidad’ (1986) in which Brea proposes a paradigm that seeks to explore Spanish youth’s worldview within the punk movement. The second predicament with Cereceda’s idea of modernity is that, by adopting Enlightenment rationality, he inadvertently brackets off recent Spanish history under Franco, a history that totally ignored some of the fundamental principles of modernity that Cereceda seems to cherish – the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. Forty years of Francoist dictatorship that stifled democracy and provided a centralized authority stand in sharp contrast to the postmodernist critical ideal concerned with changes to those institutions and conditions that buttressed Franco’s autocracy. Indeed, Habermas has been criticized for his attempts to universalize his critique of local influences of anti-modernity outside the specific German milieu to include all postmodernity and postmodernism. It is within this context that postmodernity has been viewed as moving beyond Habermas’s modernist narratives. In its legitimization of difference and fragmentation, postmodernity glorifies the particular over the general, local power over the centralized hegemony of the nation state, decentralization and democracy over autocracy and dictatorship. Cereceda’s problem lies, therefore, in his use of Habermas who has a very limited purview.

If Cereceda bases his critique of postmodernity on what he believes to be modernity’s emancipating qualities, Alfonso Sastre, the renowned playwright and social activist, grounds his suspicions in what he characterizes as ‘future rubbish.’ In ‘La posmodernidad como futura antigualla’ (1986), Sastre questions the notion of the temporal location of postmodernity. He worries about living in a postindustrial society while culturally living in a postmodern world. He poses the question: ‘Parece significarse con todo eso que estamos viviendo después: en el después. ¿Pero después de qué? … Después de la modernidad? ¿Después de la edad moderna? Pero no es y ha sido siempre así?’ (1986, p. 244) [All this seems to suggest that we are living ‘after’: in the after. But after what? … After modernity? After the modern age? But hasn’t that always been the case?]. For Sastre, postmodernity belongs to the ‘ivory towers’ because it lacks the kind of political sensibility proposed by the Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre, who calls for political action by intellectuals beyond the academic exercise of debating social issues. Sastre believes, therefore, that postmodernity is not logically possible; it lacks original insight. In addition, it is trash art, disconnected from social and political reality.

The playwright’s apprehensions about postmodernity’s temporality are nothing new. His modernist penchant for embracing a rationalized set of Enlightenment values in twentieth- and twenty-first- century Spain is untenable. The shift in Spain from an outdated industrial system to a new informational capitalism and from modern to a postmodern culture have made obsolete the grand rationalist stories of Enlightenment modernity. Put differently, historical evidence in Spain suggests that the project of modern politics that sought to deploy universal objectives such as freedom, equality, and justice in an effort to alter institutional structures of domination, were seldom realized in Francoist Spain.⁶

Scholars in North America have also questioned postmodernism, and, by extension, postmodernity in Spain. In their introduction to the edited volume, Beyond Postmodernism in Hispanic Literature (2001), Janet Pérez and Genaro Pérez write about postmodernism’s ‘progressive loss of paradigmatic status’ and consider the phenomenon as outdated. They urge critics to begin to mark out the limits of postmodernism and to ‘devote increased attention to competing aesthetics, whether pre-existing, or co-existing, or clearly ex post facto’ (2001, p. 9). For her part, Susan Larson views postmodernism on the Peninsula as ‘a hollow concept’ (2001, p. 115). She announces the death of postmodernism in Spain when she asserts ‘the story of the sensational birth and much-heralded death of Postmodernism … has direct parallels to the fate of the term in the field of Spanish cultural and literary criticism’ (2001, p. 112). Perhaps, the critic who makes the most forceful attack on postmodernism in Spain is Malcolm Compitello. In ‘Benet and Postmodernism’, Compitello submits that one cannot easily make an epistemological break between postmodernist and modernist writing because features that have been credited to postmodernist writing are manifest in modernism’s twentieth-century incarnations. He suggests that, despite Spain’s apparent emergence from dictatorship, the hegemonic modernist discursive practices of the past still prevail. These practices, he contends, are supported by a subsequent phase of the political, economic, and social ideologies that bolster the system (1991, p. 269). Compitello buttresses this point by questioning whether the presence of yuppies, the movida, and Spain’s increasingly European stance as a bona fide member of the European Community are not merely symptomatic of an earlier dominant capitalist mechanism that is still in place. He notes that postmodernism and the debate over it in Spain is nothing more than a ‘kind of shorthand expression of a reinvigorated sense of belonging to the European community’ (1991, p. 264). Compitello concludes by stressing that ‘what makes the assessment of Spanish postmodernism difficult is the additional meaning postmodernism has come to acquire, that associates it with the very visual social transformation of Spanish society symptomized by the appearance of a class of yuppies, la movida, and other events that led to the kind of cultural euphoria that Madrid proclaimed capital del mundo en 1984’ (1991, pp. 264–5). In a sense then, for Compitello, Spain’s postmodernism, following a modernism which was not really modern, is not truly postmodernism but modern.

Compitello offers no clear picture of those ‘hegemonic modernist discursive practices’ that, in his view, relate to the Francoist regime and, subsequently, to those governments that followed the dictatorship. What is clear, however, is that the hegemonic discursive practices to which Compitello refers could include essentialist, unitary, and universal discourses that exclude or devalue difference, plurality, and indeterminacy. Those practices could also imply a discourse that suffuses and influences all social practices, creates particular identities and subject positions, and sanctions particular truths. One must ask oneself if, indeed, post-Francoist governments manifest these same kinds of discursive practices.

A consistent theme belies the analysis of Spanish critics and their North American counterparts who have scrutinized postmodernism in Spain from a negative perspective. Inclined to anchor their consideration of postmodern culture on the works of Fredric Jameson, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, these commentators of postmodernism in Spain view postmodernism as an ahistorical cultural phenomenon of late capitalism that vehemently opposes modernism and transforms the historical past into a series of stylizations, pastiche, and styles based on simulacra.

Apologists of postmodernism in Spain offer a significantly distinct perspective regarding what constitutes postmodernism and postmodernity in general and their manifestation in Spain. Indeed, it is in the field of literary studies that one notices a more constructive reaction to postmodernism in Spain. Several works come to mind. One such work is Komla Aggor’s Francisco Nieva and Postmodernist Theatre (2007) in which Aggor clearly defines Spain’s role in the evolution of postmodern literary culture. In a rigorous analysis of Nieva’s theatre, Aggor establishes an ideological affinity between postmodernism and postismo, a 1940s Spanish neo-avant-garde movement, which he posits as foundation for the development of postmodernist theatre and poetry in Spain. Still, Aggor’s work, which legitimizes the basis for theorizing postmodernist theatre in general, does not deal with the social issue of postmodernity as such. Another noteworthy study that emphasizes postmodernity’s undeniable contribution to contemporary Spanish culture and literary studies is María del Pilar Lozano Mijares’s La novela española posmoderna (2007). Lozano Mijares provides a comprehensive critical and historical survey of postmodernity and postmodernism in the Western world and relates these cultural tendencies to Spain. Reading the works of Félix de Azúa, Lucía Etxebarria, Ángel García Galiano, Belén Gopegui, Andrés Ibáñez, Antonio Orejudo Utrilla, Clara Sánchez and Manuel Talens as postmodernist texts, Lozano Mijares emphasizes two forms of desen-canto: the 1968 international student agitations that ended up in disillusionment and the disenchantment that ensued following Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Whereas Lozano Mijares relies exclusively on novels to underscore her version of desencanto, my study includes other varied fields of cultural discourse that provide other perspectives of the same phenomenon. In addition, unlike Lozano Mijares who views the postmodern novels published in the later part of the millennium from a positive perspective in respect of Spain’s socio-cultural conditions, the novels I analyse are critical of some of the prevalent and reconstituted post-Francoist hegemonic structures.

Writing in True Lies: Narrative Self-Consciousness in the Contemporary Spanish Novel, Samuel Amago (2006) reads the contemporary Spanish fiction of Rosa Montero, Nuria Amat, Javier Cercas, Juan José Millás, Javier Marías, and Carlos Cañeque from the perspective of narrative consciousness. He resorts to what he calls the ‘sympathetic readings of postmodern critics’ (p. 14) such as Charles Jencks, Andreas Huyssen, Umberto Eco, and Linda Hutcheon to demonstrate how ‘in the hands of the best Spanish novelists postmodern metafiction functions as a celebration of literary difference and subjectivity’ (p. 14). Amago’s goal is to show how metafiction, an ostensibly postmodern literary device, enables ‘an important critical reassessment of the historical enterprise, and, above all, a useful reevaluation of the role that narrative plays in the understanding of human consciousness’ (p. 14). While Amago’s work presents a positive option to the pessimistic world views expressed by more negative critics of cultural postmodernism, Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture, seeks to evaluate postmodernism and postmodernity in Spain as important critical tools that highlight both the emancipative and limiting discourses that emerged in post-Francoist cultural and literary products.

In El posmodernismo y otras tendencies de la novela espoñola (1967–1995), Vance Holloway (1999) finds postmodern theory a valuable and productive tool to understand contemporary Spanish cultural production. Acknowledging the contradictory conclusions that are apparent in applying postmodernism to the Spanish novel, Holloway emphasizes the absence of critical consensus about postmodernism in general and provides an overview of the debate of postmodernism in Spanish literary studies. Yet, as I point out later, Holloway’s and other critics’ over-reliance on canonical texts is limiting.

While critics in the field of Spanish literary studies have produced to date some of the most convincing attributes of the postmodern trend in Spanish literary works, the same cannot be said about apologists of postmodernism in other fields. To be sure, it is the recognition of the various manifold discourses and narratives which affirm differences in sexuality, regional identity, and cultural identity that prompted some contributors in Tono Martínez’s and Huerga Murcia’s La polémica de la posmodernidad as well as those in Menleón’s Del Franquismo a la posmodernidad to distinguish Spain’s evolution as postmodern. Yet, most of the essays in these collections and others dealing with postmodernity in Spain do not provide viewpoints that are germane to Spain. In his study, ‘La posmodernidad existe’ (1986), Javier Sádaba does well in observing that postmodernity is neither a simple fortuitous accident nor an invention of the media. He argues that unlike their French counterparts, Spanish philosophers do not articulate clearly a postmodern theory because in matters dealing with western liberal democracy, Spain’s so-called ‘Filósofos Jóvenes’ still believe in Enlightenment precepts that advocated ‘modern reason’ (1986, pp. 174–5). Sádaba is one of a handful of critics who identifies a Spanish-style postmodernity by connecting the phenomenon to Madrid, specifically La luna de Madrid, the magazine that became an organ for debating cutting-edge Spanish culture and postmodernity. Yet, although Sádaba points out what he calls trappings of postmodernity including ‘cultura cibernética … apoteosis de los mil rocks, inundación de vídeos, ausencia de la política en su aspecto clásico’ [cybernetic culture … an apotheosis of thousands of rock groups, an inundation of videos, absence of politics in its classic sense], he fails to underscore how these trends evolved as a result of circumstances that relate to Spain’s unique socio-historical experience. Teresa Vilarós equates the movida with postmodernity in El mono del desencanto (1998). Nonetheless, she argues that not only did the movida not produce artistically sustainable works but also that postmodernity ‘[huye] de un corpus teórico, de toda teorización’ (1998, p. 35) [eschews a theoretical body of works, all forms of ‘theorization’]. Her questioning of the theoretical validity of postmodernity suggests an evasion of responsibility to understand the postmodern moment that defines contemporary Spain.⁷

Although most apologists of postmodernism in Spain have resorted to the works of Jencks, Huyssen, Barth and Hutcheon to provide important insights to postmodernism and postmodernity in general and their manifestation in Spain, one notices not only a misappropriation of these terms through cherry picking but also a failure to connect postmodernity and postmodernism to those social and cultural experiences that I am identifying as patently Spanish.

Despite the absence of a consensus regarding the parameters of the definitions of postmodernism and postmodernity and the precise meaning of these terms, it is fair to state that as a portrayal of both the wider cultural and social condition and as a description of the current literary period in Spain, postmodernity and postmodernism are irreversible parts of the critical lexicon of Peninsula studies. Writing in Postmodernisms Now, Charles Altieri notes that for many, postmodernism is ‘no longer a vital concept for the arts’ (1998, p. 1). He intimates that ‘no artist or writer is eager to ally with [postmodernism], and even critics in the humanities now find affiliations with the term a little embarrassing’ (1998, p. 1). Notwithstanding the apparent repudiation of the concept by some of its ardent adherents such as Jameson, I, along with Altieri, believe that it is still possible to deploy the ‘contrasts with what is problematic in postmodern theory in order to highlight distinctive features of how artists and writers manage to engage the same cultural problems and pressures’ (1998, p. 2). That is, through a loose combination of poststructuralist themes and cultural studies, the cultural production of the authors studied in this book offer compelling ways in which they negotiate what increasingly surface as immobilizing contradictions embodied in the theoretical concepts constructed under the rubric of postmodern theory.⁸ What becomes apparent, then, is a firmly political and clearly social framework that shapes how Spaniards imagine partaking in the political, which then can alter what they thematize in and as social interactions.

Postmodernity in this book will imply the social conditions or state of being in Spain that have been prompted by the intensification of forces of change and dissolution. These forces, impacted not only by the logic of the market place but also by the radical undermining of Spain’s prior social and political organization, have resulted in the drastic destabilization of hitherto stable values, beliefs, and economic forms. Postmodernity in Spain is, therefore,