Structures and Agents: The Concept of "Bourgeois Revolution" in Spain

Structures and Agents: The Concept of "Bourgeois Revolution" in Spain Tom Lewis teaches Spanish and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is the author of two monographs, La transformación de la teorÃ-a (1997) and Notas para una teorÃ-a del referente (1993). He is co-editor, with Francisco J. Sanchez, «^"Culture and the State in Spain: 1550-1850 (1999). He has published numerous articles on marxist theory, semiotics, and nineteenth -century Spanish literature and culture. In my view, the standard assumption of an unusually late and exceptionally uneven modernity in the case of Spain is false. This assumption has held currency at various times and for various reasons throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Efforts to change the orthodox understanding of Spanish modernity, however, can have no real chance of success unless we manage to reverse a more basic set of assumptions that clearly underwrite the notion of Spain's excessively delayed and excessively fitful coming of age. Indeed, the concept of "modernity" in general remains inextricably bound to notions of "bourgeois revolution" and "capitalist development." Since both "bourgeoisie" and "modernization" are widely held to be late and weak in Spain, it comes as no surprise that the normalized description of "Spanish modernity" is, well, that it is late and weak. Given the current state of affairs in literary and historical studies, the nineteenth century in Spain might as well be labeled "the century that has no name!" We believe we can speak or write with a certain degree of intellectual precision about the nature of the Golden Age, of early modernity, of the Baroque, of the medieval period— even of the posguerra and posfranquismo. Of course, these periodizing categories also invite hard questions and can display a conceptual wobbliness when subjected to the shake, rattle, and roll of contemporary theory. But none of them rivals "the nineteenth century" for the kind of sheer conceptual instability caused by the lack of a basic agreement over just what kind of animal "the nineteenth-century " really is: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 3, 1999 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies El siglo de la burguesÃ-a, el liberalismo y la revolución industrial como trilogÃ-a de un proceso global de ruptura, ha sido puesto en cuestión por otras categorÃ-as que asignan a la centuria un carácter de pervivencias de un mundo anterior. (Bahamonde y MartÃ-nez 13) This is not to say that there have not been dominant positions on the character of the nineteenth century at one time or another. A broadly marxist view of the century as a revolutionary period enjoyed significant intellectual purchase during the 1960s and 70s (Clavero; Sebastià ). Beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing throughout the 90s, the view that increasingly comes to dominate Spanish historiography —and, by transmission, the view that increasingly influences Spanish literary criticism—represents an eclectic position . Both transformation and continuity are recognized, but they are figured into a non-revolutionary balance sheet that emphasizes gradualism and the incompleteness of change in nineteenth-century Spain (Alvarez Junco, Cruz). Such a position is reflected compactly by Angel Bahamonde and Jesús MartÃ-nez at the beginning of their Historia de España. SigL· XIX (1994): A Io largo del siglo XIX la configuración del sistema polÃ-tico liberal, pues, adquirió un tono reformista desde arriba y oligárquico con el asentamiento de las élites que eran producto de Ia confluencia de tradición y modernidad, abandonándose las alternativas populares y democráticas. También quedó en elaboración teórica la movilidad social con el dibujo secular de los infranqueables lÃ-mites de la sociedad abierta. La desarticulación del Antiguo Régimen en sus aspectos jurÃ-dicos habÃ-a implicado la definición y construcción de un nuevo Estado, que administrativamente recogÃ-a una herencia dieciochesca. Pero todo ello no quiere decir que la sociedad espa ñola sufriera una mutación global en el sentido de ruptura con un mundo anterior. Las élites del dinero y del poder se reordenaron, sin que existiera una sustitución global de élites, mientras el camino de la industrializaci ón y de las...