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135 u 8 Tensions in Contemporary Basque Literature Jon Kortazar (Translated by Stephanie A. Mueller) It is always difficult to explain in so few pages the complex and ever-changing re­ ality of a minority, or minoritized (depending on who is writing), literature, such as Basque literature.1 Dealing with a literature that is naturally less stable and more changing than so-called normalized literatures poses an added danger. Minoritized literatures are characterized by conditions of extensive mobility within small temporal spaces due to the social structure in which they lie. Moreover, within these minoritized systems, literary creation tends to be valued for its symbolic capital or appraised based on identitarian or ideological criteria. It is also the case that this same pattern can probably be detected within larger literary systems as well. After all, ideology is the large determinant umbrella within which all literary creation moves about. However, ideology holds even more influence in minoritized systems because their small size results in a higher level of sensitivity within social circles. Like a nervous neuron that jumps more quickly and intensely, a minoritized literary system possesses a greater capacity for immediate responses which can also disappear fleetingly. Normalized literatures are generally described with more certainty, thanks to a critical body that has already created, detected, and, to a certain extent, determined a recognizable and accepted image for that particular literary system. Therefore, mindful of this essay’s function as an exercise in the unstable description of a complex system in constant change, I have limited its scope to an explanation of various tensions or changing historical circumstances that can be observed in Basque literature. Tensions in Minoritized Literatures In his analysis of Galician literature, another minority language literary system that in many ways parallels (and in others, notably diverges from) Basque literature, Antón 136 JON KORTAZAR Figueroa defined the following tensions within the Galician literary system: 1) Spanish can/cannot appear in the text (regardless of a potential lack of verisimilitude). 2) The linguistic norm used must be x rather than y. 3) What matters is to write in Galician. The use of “good” Galician is of fundamental importance. 4) Thematic norms: the text should have/need not have Galician culture as its referential source. 5) The text should/need not respect linguistic norms. 6) The writer should/need not respect linguistic norms. 7) The writer should/need not uphold a determined political militancy. Public “conduct” is relevant in the evaluation of a text. 8) The writer can/should not write and publish literature in Spanish (Figueroa 107). For my purposes, I shall substitute Euskara, or Basque, wherever the text says Galician. This schema has been so useful in the study of Galician literature that­ Helena González Fernández has successfully applied it to the study of women’s writing . She has taken the tensions produced upon the creation of a literature written in a diglossic language, grappling with an idea of nation, and has opened them up to a reflection of gender tensions. Just as I have translated and adapted Figueroa’s formal schema, I shall also do so with Helena González Fernández’s, though in this case I include only the applicable tensions: 1) Thematic norms: the text should have/need not have the feminine as its referential source. 2) The writing should/has no need to be directly related to gender. 3) The writer should/has no need to respect patriarchal grammar. 4) The writer should/has no need to manifest a determined feminist militancy. Public “conduct” is relevant in the evaluation of a text. 5) What matters is that the author be a woman. That what a woman writes is “good” is of fundamental importance (González Fernández 55). I include González Fernández’s schema here to demonstrate how effective Figueroa’s is. It should be noted that this double paradigm of reflection has spread throughout the field of Galician literary criticism. By applying Figueroa’s schema to the current situation of Basque literature, it is possible to construct a cohesive structure that brings to light certain aesthetic, cultural, social, and identitarian tensions that have developed during the period extending from General Franco’s death (1975) to the present moment, when the Basque literary system flourishes. It may be necessary to modify the order of some of Figueroa’s characteristics in order for them to be applicable to the Basque literary system. For example, while Figueroa’s first tension...

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