Borderland identities and contemporary Spanish fiction

Abstract

During the post-Franco period, national borders have constituted a subject of great debate in Spain. The country's reorganization into a state of autonomies in 1978 officially recognized distinct national entities within Spain while contentious negotiation over the extension and the limits of sovereignty has ensued until the present. Spain's membership in the European Union in 1986, emblematic of its newly established democracy and participation in the global marketplace, further transformed the nation's boundaries. Tensions mark the centripetal-centrifugal battle of globalization, as local or national concerns vie for advantage and supra-national alliances promote their interests. Although in theory the EU and globalization open up national borders to unrestricted movement of goods, capital, and people, in practice certain migrations are highly regulated and restricted. This is certainly the case for non-EU members and, particularly, for people from less developed nations. Nonetheless, Spain has seen a dramatic increase in immigration from areas with economic and political strife. These various border realignments and crossings have a profound impact on constructions of national and local community, ethnicity, and individual identity. My dissertation examines border crossings and borderlands created by these diverse political and social phenomena as imagined in contemporary Spanish fiction.

Viewing literature as cultural practice, I read narratives, from the 1980s, 1990s, and the present decade, of Carme Riera (“Letra de ángel” and “Mon semblable, mon frère,” Contra el amor en compañía y otros relatos), Suso de Toro ( Calzados Lola and No Vuelvas), Cristina Fernández Cubas (El año de Gracia and “La flor de España,” El ángulo del horror), and Lourdes Ortiz (“Fátima de los naufragios” and “La piel de Marcelinda,” Fátima de los naufragios) as engaging in critical dialogues with dominant political policies. I take a cultural studies approach, drawing on anthropological, sociological, and historical sources and contemporary theory to illuminate my analyses of these fictional texts. Notions of postcolonial identity, borderland situations, and hybridity inform my work. I give unique application to these ideas, usually discussed in the context of former colonized nations, as I ground my writing in the particularity of borderlands and narratives of post-totalitarian Spain, a former colonizer.