The monolingualism of identity or aporias from the end of the world: (indicial notes on Fogo cruzado)

Vidal Bouzon, Álvaro J. (2002) The monolingualism of identity or aporias from the end of the world: (indicial notes on Fogo cruzado). Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 3 (2). pp. 203-226. ISSN 1463-6204

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Abstract

In 1989 the collection of drawings and short-stories in Galizan-Portuguese Fogo cruzado was published with an untitled and introductory non-literary text prepared by its authors. The process of its creation, publishing and reception was an extreme expression of the struggles determining cultural production in Galiza.

In this introductory piece, a collective authorship proclaims the impossibility of Galizan literature. The text articulates two dominant structural lines in the relationships of the Iberian peoples, a paradigm of which is Galizan society: the absolute uncaninness of an unheimlich Portugal for Spain; the sinister implications of that condition for history, societies and cultures in the Peninsula.

The most obvious crystalization of that structure is the sociolinguistic condition (especially in terms of standardization policies) of Portuguese in Galiza. This structure is determined by a double bind mechanism within the practices of, above all, intellectuals and politicians.

The prefatory text of Fogo cruzado is written in the long shadow of a Berlin Wall in imminent collapse, being the final spectacular effect of capitalism’s restructuring of its productive and reproductive spheres. In such a context, literature, as it has been progressively constituted by the rise of capitalism, is becoming more and more an archaelogical object.

This article proposes an aporetic approach to the impossibility of Galizan literature as constituting a paradigm for any national literary production at the end of the century. However, that paradigmatic effect is the specific result of the dislocation of a productive general condition: a non-literature within a defective nation and an excessive State.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1022960
Additional Information: The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 2002 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1463620022000013983
Keywords: National identity, National literature, Nationalism, Spain, Galicia
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Arts > School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies > Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/1463620022000013983
Depositing User: Vidal Bouzon, Dr Álvaro J
Date Deposited: 29 Feb 2016 13:20
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 20:32
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/32011

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