Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War

Sebastiaan Faber

Description

The ability to forget the violent twentieth-century past was long seen as a virtue in Spain, even a duty. But the common wisdom has shifted as increasing numbers of Spaniards want to know what happened, who suffered, and who is to blame. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War shows how historiography, fiction, and photography have shaped our views of the 1936–39 war and its long, painful aftermath.

Faber traces the curious trajectories of iconic Spanish Civil War photographs by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour; critically reads a dozen recent Spanish novels and essays; interrogates basic scholarly assumptions about history, memory, and literature; and interviews nine scholars, activists, and documentarians who in the past decade and a half have helped redefine Spain's relationship to its past. In this book Faber argues that recent political developments in Spain—from the grassroots call for the recovery of historical memory to the indignados movement and the foundation of Podemos—provide an opportunity for scholars in the humanities to engage in a more activist, public, and democratic practice.

Sujets

• Human Rights
• Histoire
• Spain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826521804
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 13 Mo

Extrait

MEMORY BATTLES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
MEMORY BATTLES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
History, Fiction, Photography
Sebastiaan Faber
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
NASHVILLE
© 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2018
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LC CONTROL NUMBER 2016058489
LC CLASSIFICATION NUMBER DP269.A56 F333 2017
DEWEY CLASSIFICATION NUMBER 946.081072
LC RECORD AVAILABLE AT lccn.loc.gov/2016058489
ISBN 978-0-8265-2178-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2179-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2180-4 (ebook)
To Aart Faber (1941–2012)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Joining the Battle: Spanish History and Academic Engagement
PART 1: MEMORY AND THE VISUAL ARCHIVE
1. Memory as Montage: Spanish Civil War Photography
2. On Revelation: What Can We Learn from the Mexican Suitcase?
PART 2: HISTORY AND MEMORY
3. “¿Usted, qué sabe?” History, Memory, and the Witness
4. Memory and the Law: Exceptionalist Temptations
PART 3: REFRAMING THE PAST
5. The Thirst to Understand: Historians of the Spanish Civil War
6. In Search of Spain’s Disappeared
PART 4: INTELLECTUALS AT WAR
7. Treason of the Intellectuals: Andrés Trapiello’s Civil War
8. An Epidemic of Mediocrity: Spain According to Gregorio Morán
9. Oh, Behave! Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Pleasantville
PART 5: FICTION AS MEMORY
10. The Spanish Civil War Retold: The Novel as Affiliative Act
11. Postmemory and Other Premises
12. The Irresponsible Novelist: Javier Marías
13. Javier Cercas, or, The Triumph of Kitsch
Epilogue: The Past Belongs to Everyone
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WOULD NOT EXIST without the infinite generosity of the many friends and colleagues who, over the years, have been willing to listen and talk, read drafts, and make suggestions. I’m afraid my debt to them is too large to repay. I owe the good qualities of this book to them. I would particularly like to thank Noelia Adánez, Palmar Álvarez-Blanco, Montse Armengou, Manuel Aznar Soler, Mari Paz Balibrea, David Becerra, Kata Beilin, Peter N. Carroll, Almudena Carracedo, Francie Cate-Arries, Juan Carlos Cruz Suárez, Simon Doubleday, Cecilia Enjuto-Rangel, Francisco Espinosa Maestre, Carolina Espinoza, James D. Fernández, Francisco Ferrándiz, Teresa Férriz, Joseba Gabilondo, Pedro García-Caro, Pedro García Guirao, Sonia García López, Marina Garde, Baltasar Garzón, Jorge Gaupp, Anthony Geist, Olga Glondys, François Godicheau, Antonio Gómez López-Quiñones, Jordi Gracia, Helen Graham, Gina Herrmann, Jesús Izquierdo Martín, Gabriel Jackson, Ariel Jerez, David Jorge, Jo Labanyi, Germán Labrador, Susan Larson, Fernando Larraz, José Ramón López, Miguel de Lucas, Ana Luengo, Steven Marsh, Mario Martín Gijón, Rebecca Haidt, Jordi Marí, Guillem Martínez, Marshall Mateer, Alberto Moreiras, Cristina Moreiras, Luis Moreno-Caballud, Carmen Moreno-Nuño, Gijs Mulder, José María Naharro-Calderón, Robert Newcomb, Fraser Ottanelli, Esther Pascua, Antonio Pedrós-Gascón, Óscar Pereira Zazo, Paul Preston, Joan Ramon Resina, Aaron Retish, Berta del Río, Jacobo Rivero, Juan Rodríguez, Isis Sadek, Juan Salas, Benita Sampedro, Gervasio Sánchez, Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, Antolín Sánchez Cuervo, Pablo Sánchez León, Ignacio Sánchez-Prado, Yvonne Scholten, Bécquer Seguín, Emilio Silva, Carles Sirera, Rosi Song, Steven Torres, Michael Ugarte, Isabelle Touton, Noël Valis, José del Valle, José Luis Villacañas, Ángel Viñas, William Viestenz, Félix Zamora, and Trisha Ziff, as well as Carlos Blanco Aguinaga (1926–2013) and Michael Ratner (1943–2016), who spent their lives fighting the good fight and are sorely missed. I would also like to thank my students at Oberlin College, as well as my colleagues Claire Solomon, Patrick O’Connor, Ana Cara, Jed Deppman, Erik Inglis, Wendy Kozol, Geoff Pingree, Steven Volk, Kristina Mani, and deans Sean Decatur, Joyce Babyak, and Tim Elgren. I have been fortunate to enjoy the hospitality of Spanish editors willing to publish my rabble-rousing and sometimes experimental texts and podcasts: Alfonso Armada at FronteraD ; the editorial team at Contratiempo; Magda Bandera at La Marea ; and Miguel Mora at CTXT: Contexto y Acción .
I am grateful to Radboud University, particularly Brigitte Adriaensen, Maarten Steenmeijer, and dean Margot van Mulken for allowing me to spend six months in Nijmegen as part of the Excellence Initiative, and to the members of the research group on memory and materiality for their feedback. My thanks, too, to the editors of the venues that published earlier versions of these chapters for allowing me to include them in this book. Parts of Chapter 3 appeared in the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos (vol. 36, no. 1, 2012) and a special issue of the Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies (vol. 5, 2007) edited by Javier Krauel; and parts of Chapter 4 were first published in a volume of Hispanic Issues Online edited by Luis Martín-Estudillo and Nicholas Spadaccini (vol. 11, Fall 2012). Some of the interviews in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 were originally featured in The Volunteer , the quarterly magazine published by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and part of the conversation with Pablo Sánchez-León appeared in CTXT: Contexto y Acción . A version of Chapter 7 appeared in Ínsula (no. 809, 2014). Versions of Chapter 8 , Chapter 13 , and Chapter 14 came out in FronteraD (respectively on Sept. 24, 2015; Feb. 12, 2015; and 28 Oct. 2013). Different parts of Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 first appeared in a chapter of the Companion to the Twentieth-Century Spanish Novel edited by Marta Altisent (Tamesis, 2008), in Pasavento (vol. 2, no. 1, 2014), and in Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000–2010) , edited by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and Toni Dorca (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2010). An earlier version of Chapter 9 was published in ALCES XXI (vol. 1, 2013), and a version of Chapter 12 appeared in Allí donde uno diría que ya no puede haber nada , edited by Maarten Steenmeijer and Alexis Grohmann (Rodopi, 2009).
The staff at the International Institute for Social History and Leiden University were extremely helpful. Thanks, too, to the International Center of Photography, particularly Cynthia Young, for permission to reprint images by Robert Capa and Gerda Taro; to Ben Shneiderman and Helen Sarid, for permission to reprint images by David Seymour; to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam for permission to reproduce materials from its archive; and to John Heartfield and the Heartfield Community of Heirs for permission to reproduce a montage by John Heartfield. I deeply appreciate the expert support from Michael Ames, director of Vanderbilt University Press, and his staff, as well as Andrea Thornton’s careful copyediting. My deepest thanks go to my family: Kim, Jakob, and Maya. I can’t imagine life without them.
MEMORY BATTLES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
INTRODUCTION
Joining the Battle
Spanish History and Academic Engagement
AT A LIVE RADIO DEBATE on the day before the start of the campaign for the June 2016 elections, a sixteen-year-old Spaniard confronted a representative of the ruling Partido Popular (PP) with a provocative question. “Do you feel proud,” he asked, “to belong to a party that has ignored the almost 100,000 people who are buried without their family members knowing where?” The young man, who referred to mass graves from the Spanish Civil War that continue to litter the country eighty years later, went on to recall several dismissive comments about the victims and their families from prominent members of the PP. When he was done formulating his question, the audience erupted in a spontaneous ovation that lasted twenty seconds. “Let’s see,” the PP representative, Ignacio Echániz, replied when the applause had died down. “In 1975, we Spaniards worked very hard to close the wounds of the past . . . [and] to forget the past and work for the future. . . . The only thing we have said . . . is that we should not open up new political fronts that may fracture Spanish society because it’s very important to continue to work for the future so that our children and grandchildren . . . can have a country that lives in peace and liberty” (Cadena Ser 2016). The reply was not surprising; Echániz spewed clichés that the Spanish Right, along with a portion of the Left, has been repeating for decades. What was surprising was the reaction from the audience: it scoffed. The ability to forget the past was long seen as a virtue in Spain—even a duty. But the common wisdom has shifted. The duty now is no longer to forget but to remember. Younger generations want to know what happened, who suffered, and who is to blame. And the means available to acquire and interpret this knowledge are not limited to history books. They include archeology, anthropology, sociology, and law, as well as film, photography, and fiction.
How have history, fiction, and photography shaped Spanish memory? How has democratic Spain dealt with the legacy of the Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, and the Transition? And how have academics, writers, filmmakers, photographers, and journalists in Spain and elsewhere engaged with a collective process tha