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11: Postmodernism and Spanish Literature
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183 u 11 Postmodernism and Spanish Literature María del Pilar Lozano Mijares To understand what has happened in Spanish literature from the time of the Transition to the present, the only truly comprehensive way to proceed is by accepting postmodernity as the episteme (in the Foucaultian sense of the word) of democratic Spain; that is, by assuming that the structure of knowledge in that country changed—as it did in all the other Western nations some ten years earlier—and that this change affected all artistic and cultural forms of expression. My aim in this essay is not to examine the controversy surrounding the reception of postmodern literature in Spain, as if it were something coming from outside, something external, but rather to analyze literature in Spain (particularly fiction) from the perspective of postmodernity—in other words, from a new way of looking at the world, a new epistemological structure that has permeated life there since the mid-seventies and has rapidly brought Spain up to date with other Western societies, which had found themselves in this new episteme since, symbolically speaking, 1968. I will first address the emergence of the controversy regarding postmodernity in Spain within its socio-cultural context. Then, I will review what can be considered postmodern Spanish literature, with an emphasis on fiction. Finally, I will illustrate the two stages of postmodern Spanish narrative (from the 1980s’ dark novels of disenchantment to the fiction of partial assertion of the nineties) through an analysis of two paradigmatic texts: La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (The Truth about the Savolta Case) by Eduardo Mendoza, published in 1975; and La música del mundo o El efecto Montoliu (The Music of the World or the Montoliu Effect) by Andrés Ibáñez, published in 1995. I consider those to be the greatest exponents of early and late Spanish postmodernism, respectively. Postmodernity in Spain Unlike other Western countries, in Spain postmodernism had in the beginning the status of a superficial fashion, something frivolous and imported, a perception it 184 MARÍA DEL PILAR LOZANO MIJARES has yet to shake off. Just as Spanish painting resorted, in the early 1980s, to an abstract Informalist aesthetic, inherited from Tapiès, Saura, and Oteiza, while the other Western countries were already experiencing the return of figurative art characteristic of postmodernism, in Spain the advent of postmodernity was belated, a fact which came to underline its apparent ephemeral and trivial character. As Bessière points out (49–68), the period from 1984 to 1988, was the key time frame for the publication of articles concerning postmodernity and, as a result, the beginning of the controversy in Spain. The newspaper El País had been playing a leading role since 1982, but there were other fundamental contributions, including the ones made by the denominational magazine Razón y Fe; by the colloquium “Pensar el presente” which took place in Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes in the spring of 1989 (attended by Jean-François Lyotard and Eugenio Trías, among others); by Los Cuadernos del Norte (issue number 43, July–August 1987); by the magazine La Luna; and by Francisco Umbral’s book Guía de la posmodernidad: Crónicas, personajes e itinerarios madrileños (1987). Two events marked the beginning of the debate in Spain, both linked to El País. The first was a colloquium on postmodern fiction that took place in Madrid and was reviewed in El País on March 15, 1984, under the headline “Nuevos narradores intentan definir la posmodernidad” (New Authors Try to Define Postmodernity). Manifestos were presented at this colloquium about a new kind of aesthetics, whose main core of supporters rallied around the neo-avant-garde magazine La Luna, published in Madrid. This publication served as an outlet for a new urban movement in which different theories of aesthetics coexisted, and was driven by an eagerness to create new art forms. Its initial success came mostly from the absence of a renovating project or a teleology, which were substituted by an acceptance of eclecticism. The novel Larva, by Julián Ríos, was declared the paradigm of postmodern Spanish literature. The second event consisted in the polemic which, throughout 1984, went back and forth in the pages of the same newspaper between representatives of what Jesús Ibáñez (27) calls the Historical Left—Alfonso Sastre, Carlos Castilla del Pino—and representatives of a new left that defended postmodernity without incurring in an ideological...