History, Violence, and the Hyperreal: Representing Culture in the Contemporary Spanish Novel

Chapter One

31 Chapter One Rewriting the Past as Cultural Capital Sacred Violence in Carme Riera’s Dins el darrer blau Religious, ethnic, or national minorities are never actually reproached for their difference, but for not being as different as expected, and in the end for not differing at all. René Girard Violence and the Sacred The tension between History and violence seems to plant the seeds of resentment and prejudice. The act of forgetting violent events as a form of self-preservation can be attributed to a national consciousness as well as to individuals. Carme Riera’s award-winning novel Dins el darrer blau [In the Last Blue] begs forgiveness in its deliberate presentation of the lives, persecution, and deaths of Mallorcan Jews. Riera considers History a desperate, destructive tool that chips away at the victims’ version of events and in doing so destroys any possibility of a comprehensive historical picture. Riera dedicated several years to extensive research on her native island of Mallorca in order to unearth the existing “facts” about a group of conversos who were condemned to die for trying to escape from the island in 1687. The novel is a reworking of the information from the point of view of the conversos. The commingling of historical “fact” and fictional renderings of actual people make this work an example of hybrid historical narrative that allows the author great liberty with issues of historical accuracy. The fact that the conversos’ account is not documented and that there only exists a version written by a priest leads Riera through a labyrinth of experimentation with characters and events. Riera cites her sources clearly in the final note of the novel and adds that her novel does not have, “encara que pugui 32 Chapter One semblar-ho, cap intenció polèmica” (432) [“even though it may seem so, any political agenda”].1 The polemics that, in my opinion, are clearly presented in the novel do not dispute past actions or motivation but rather question notions of historical justice. She claims that the purpose of the novel is to vindicate the Mallorcan Jews by finally giving their side of the story a place, a physical space on the shelves of time, but she also writes to condemn common notions of what history is and how it functions within our society. The debilitating kind of history that Nietzsche describes impedes progress with a historical culture that relies on dates and events as representatives of the past instead of using interpretive texts that question events, figures , and outcomes.2 The polemics in Riera’s novel lie not only in her unflinching ability to interpret the violent history of the Inquisition and the lack of authoritative material available to scholars representing the victims’ side but also in her creation of characters that live and breathe within the novelistic reality and come to represent human beings instead of just numbers and data. Maryellen Bieder connects the seduction of the reader common in Riera’s works to the notion of cultural capital when she claims: “she [Riera] interweaves the question of national identity into her play of gender and language” (“Cultural” 53). It is this stagnant idea of national identity based in historical “fact” that Riera challenges in her works and specifically in Dins el darrer blau. The risk inherent in the representation of the past lies in the unearthing of the humanity or in some cases the inhumanity of history, yet understanding these elements of society is exactly what allows a civilization to progress and develop. The polemics of the novel concern not so much how certain elements of the past are represented or omitted but rather how these representations shape contemporary notions of history and culture. Not surprisingly Riera unveils several levels of violence in the novel that serve to criticize historical decisions and actions but also present violence as a hierarchical marker that distinguishes between classes and genders. Women’s issues have always been at the forefront of Riera’s novels and short stories.3 Many of her works investigate the problematic formulation of female identity when the subject is forced to conform to patriarchal norms (Camí-Vela 14). Dins el darrer blau seems at 33 Rewriting the Past first glance to eschew issues of women’s identity in favor of a larger historical project. Nevertheless, this novel can be read as a condemnation of the violence against the disempowered that upholds social...