3 results
11 - Ready-to-Hand: The Withdrawal of Animal Life in Francoist Cultural Production
- Edited by Luis I. Prádanos, Miami University
-
- Book:
- A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 17 January 2023, pp 125-132
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
As the non-human turn gathered speed over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, critics of Iberian cultural production increasingly granted higher consideration to non-human species and inanimate objects as variously deserving of agency, rights, and analytical attention. Carrying out an eco-critical or post-humanist analysis can be more straightforward in cultural texts from the recent past, as contemporary authors and directors of novels, film, and other media are ensconced in the throes of myriad ecological crises and thus often create ample stages in their works for critique of the anthropocentric biases at the heart of concepts such as nature, culture, and conservation. However, the non-human turn also illuminates, retroactively, overlooked aspects of foundational texts and films from earlier in the Anthropocene, before it was referred to as such, to which scholars in Iberian Studies already have provided ample insight. In this chapter, I will focus specifically on the presence of the animal in texts produced during the Francoist dictatorship, as these works emphasize how modern systems of philosophical, cultural, and scientific understanding articulated the place of the human in relation to the lives of other species and inanimate objects. I will focus especially on the figure of the pigeon-dove in Mercè Rodoreda’s 1962 novel La plaça del diamant (The Time of the Doves). Animal life, even when relegated to symbolic practice, is central to the story of Iberian cultural production in the twentieth century.
The cultural status of animals and their symbolic weight in cultural production are of critical importance to some of the most celebrated novelists, poets, playwrights, and film directors of twentieth-century Spain. In numerous cases, animal life was mobilized during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco between 1939 and 1975 as part of intricate symbolic systems that attempted to critique Spanish society and politics while evading the Regime’s repressive crosshairs. The bull, perhaps the symbolic animal par excellence in Spain from the moment the Ancient Greek writer Strabo describes the Iberian peninsula as a stretched-out bull’s hide, was a frequent target. Luis Martín-Santos and Juan Goytisolo, prominent novelists who navigated the authoritarian structures of the Francoist Regime while nevertheless expanding the representational possibilities and thematic depths of the Spanish novel, criticized bullfighting in their literature and public writings as conceptually tied to masculinity, political violence, and anti-liberalism.
9 - Sins of the Flesh: Bullfighting as a Model of Power
- from Part III - Iberian Dialogs
-
- By William Viestenz, University of Minnesota
- Edited by Joan Ramon Resina
-
- Book:
- Iberian Modalities
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 22 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 01 February 2013, pp 143-161
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Durs càstigs eren conservats en símbols vells.
– Salvador Espriu, Setmana SantaThe ancient Roman geographer Strabo is best known, within Iberian studies, as being the source of the infamous comparison of Hispania to a bull's hide. As with most quotations taken out of context, Strabo's original source bears more complexity than is revealed by common discourse. Using a more precise translation, Strabo actually writes that Spain (and he certainly means Hispania) resembles an ox hide, just as Sicily is akin to a triangle and the Peloponnese to a plane-leaf (128). Strabo, more importantly, argues that a totalizing image of a landmass is not at all the ideal manner by which to derive information through geographical inquiry. He writes, just a few lines earlier, that when gleaning geographical detail it is best to separate territories into limbs: “the best way to define a country is by the rivers, mountains, or sea; also, where possible, by the nation or nations [who inhabit it], and by its size and configuration” (127). With respect to epistemology, therefore, one is encouraged to deconstruct a landmass limb by limb, with special attention paid to the configuration of the individual geographical and sociological parts, rather than drawing conclusions from an all-encompassing, macro perspective.
Whatever was Strabo's intent, that bullfighting is commonly referred to as Spain's fiesta nacional points toward the indisputable fact that the bull has become a symbol widely contextualized within Spanish literature, art, and cinema as a kind of totemic identity image that is imbued with qualities meant to describe, affirm, and at times reject national character. The controversial nature of the practice has recently come to a head with the July 2010 prohibition of bullfighting by the Catalonian Generalitat. This proclamation, as well as RTVE's decision in January 2011 to limit broadcasts of bullfights during hours when children tend to watch television, have sparked a ripple effect throughout Spain on both sides of the proverbial political aisle. In Catalonia, the prohibition was justified on the grounds of animal cruelty.
9 - Sins of the Flesh: Bullfighting as a Model of Power
- from Part III - Iberian Dialogs
-
- By William Viestenz, University of Minnesota
- Edited by Joan Ramon Resina, Stanford University
-
- Book:
- Iberian Modalities
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 05 May 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 February 2013, pp 143-161
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Durs càstigs eren conservats en sí mbols vells.
– Salvador Espriu, Setmana SantaThe ancient Roman geographer Strabo is best known, within Iberian studies, as being the source of the infamous comparison of Hispania to a bull's hide. As with most quotations taken out of context, Strabo's original source bears more complexity than is revealed by common discourse. Using a more precise translation, Strabo actually writes that Spain (and he certainly means Hispania) resembles an ox hide, just as Sicily is akin to a triangle and the Peloponnese to a plane-leaf (128). Strabo, more importantly, argues that a totalizing image of a landmass is not at all the ideal manner by which to derive information through geographical inquiry. He writes, just a few lines earlier, that when gleaning geographical detail it is best to separate territories into limbs: “the best way to define a country is by the rivers, mountains, or sea; also, where possible, by the nation or nations [who inhabit it], and by its size and configuration” (127). With respect to epistemology, therefore, one is encouraged to deconstruct a landmass limb by limb, with special attention paid to the configuration of the individual geographical and sociological parts, rather than drawing conclusions from an all-encompassing, macro perspective.
Whatever was Strabo's intent, that bullfighting is commonly referred to as Spain's fiesta nacional points toward the indisputable fact that the bull has become a symbol widely contextualized within Spanish literature, art, and cinema as a kind of totemic identity image that is imbued with qualities meant to describe, affirm, and at times reject national character.
![](/core/cambridge-core/public/images/lazy-loader.gif)