Exile and Cultural Hegemony

Sebastiaan Faber

Description

After Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War, a great many of the country's intellectuals went into exile in Mexico. During the three and a half decades of Francoist dictatorship, these exiles held that the Republic, not Francoism, represented the authentic culture of Spain. In this environment, as Sebastiaan Faber argues in Exile and Cultural Hegemony, the Spaniards' conception of their role as intellectuals changed markedly over time.

The first study of its kind to place the exiles' ideological evolution in a broad historical context, Exile and Cultural Hegemony takes into account developments in both Spanish and Mexican politics from the early 1930s through the 1970s. Faber pays particular attention to the intellectuals' persistent nationalism and misplaced illusions of pan-Hispanist grandeur, which included awkward and ironic overlaps with the rhetoric employed by their enemies on the Francoist right. This embrace of nationalism, together with the intellectuals' dependence on the increasingly authoritarian Mexican regime and the international climate of the Cold War, eventually caused them to abandon the Gramscian ideal of the intellectual as political activist in favor of a more liberal, apolitical stance preferred by, among others, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset.

With its comprehensive approach to topics integral to Spanish culture, both students of and those with a general interest in twentieth-century Spanish literature, history, or culture will find Exile and Cultural Hegemony a fascinating and groundbreaking work.

Sujets

• Latin American Studies
• Histoire
• Latin America
• Mexico
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 13 décembre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826591661
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

andCultural Hegemony SpàNish

INTEllEcTuàls iN MExico, 1939–1975

S e b a S t I a a n F a b e r

Exile and Cultural Hegemony

Exile AND CULTURAL HEGEMONY

Spanish Intellectuals

in Mexico, 1939–1975

Sebastiaan Faber

V A N D E R B I L T U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Nashville

©2002Vanderbilt University Press All rights reserved First Edition2002

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in the United States of America

Publication of this volume has been supported by a generous subsidy from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and United States Universities

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Faber, Sebastiaan,1969- Exile and cultural hegemony : Spanish intellectuals in Mexico,1939-1975/ Sebastiaan Faber.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISB N 0-8265-1422-7(cloth : alk. paper) 1. Spaniards—Mexico—Intellectual life—20th century. 2. Intellectuals—Mexico—Attitudes.3. Pan-Hispanism. 4. Nationalism—Spain—History—20th century.5. Politics and culture—Spain—History—20th century.6. Spain—History— Civil War,1936-1939—Refugees.7. Mexico—History—20th century.8. Frente Popular (Spain)9. Political refugees— Mexico—History—20th century.10. Political refugees—Spain— History—20th century. I. Title. F 1392. S 7 F 232002 305.5’52’097209045—dc21 2002011655

Sólo se juzga el ayer a la luz de cuando sea y con un conocimiento de causa del que carecía el autor. No es justo.

[The past is only judged in light of the present, and with a knowledge of the facts that the author did not have. It isn’t fair.]

—Max Aub

Exiles, émigrés, refugees, and expatriates uprooted from their lands must make do in new surround- ings, and the creativity as well as the sadness that can be seen in what they do is one of the experi- ences that has still to find its chroniclers. . . .

—Edward Said,Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

PART I

1 2 3

PART II

4

5

6

PART III

7

Exile and Cultural Hegemony: Intellectuals and Nationalism

Introduction: Intellectuals in Exile Mexico and the Spanish Civil War The Struggle for Cultural Hegemony

Hope, Defeat, and Delirium: The Civil War and the First Years of Exile The Popular Front and the Civil War: Contradictions of a Utopian Project Paulino Masip: Nationalism, Moralism, and the Limits of the Popular Front Revolution The Republican Countercanon and the Dream of Pan-Hispanist Unity

Left out in the Cold (War): The Aporias of Exile and the Retreat into Liberalism A Changed Political Landscape: The Appropriation of Liberalism and the Return of the Detached Intellectual

3 12 28

55

92

120

151

viii

C O N T E N T S

8

9

Epilogue

Ortega’s Legacy in Mexico: Elitism and Gaos’s Myth ofTranstierro Max Aub: Exile asAporia

A Disputed Cultural Heritage: The Exiles as a Tool of Political Legitimation

Notes Bibliography Index

186 218

267

275 287

Preface

This book is about Spanish intellectuals who were exiled to Mexico dur- ing the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939–75) that followed the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and about their struggle for cultural hege- mony based on the claim that the Republic, not Francoism, represented the “true” culture of the Spanish nation. The account of the Spaniards’ cultural production presented here will be, above all, critical; it will at- tempt to avoid the mythifying tendencies that have marred much of the existing work on Spanish Civil War exile. Starting in the years of the Popu- lar Front, this book analyzes the Spaniards’ changing conception of their social role as intellectuals, the relation between culture and politics, and Spain’s position in the modern world. I argue that the Spaniards’ depen- dence on the increasingly authoritarian Mexican regime, their misplaced illusions of pan-Hispanist grandeur, and, more in general, the interna- tional climate of the Cold War caused them to abandon the Gramscian ideal of the intellectual as political activist in favor of a more liberal, apo- litical stance favored by, among others, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. What distinguishes this book from existing studies in English or Span- ish is, in the first place, its critical framework, which combines methods of literary criticism with insights from history and political science. The thought of Antonio Gramsci is of central importance to my argument. Gramsci functions both as the historical representation of Popular Front philosophy and the theoretical reference point against which to measure the ideological evolution of the Spanish exiles. Second,Exile and Cultural

ix