Escribir la catalanidad. Lengua e identidades culturales en la narrativa contemporánea de Cataluña (review)

In many ways Escribir la catalanidad is a timely intervention in contemporary debate over the status and limits of Catalan literature, though its terms of reference are similar to those used by Kathryn Crameri (Language, the Novelist and National Identity in Post-Franco Catalonia, Oxford: Legenda, 2000). In general, King gives an enlightening account of the origins and reasons for the debate, as well as proffering a range of eclectic readings of contemporary narratives that reflect different attitudes to Catalan culture. Opening with a quotation from Salvador Giner, he clearly grounds his work in sociological approaches to culture. Nonetheless, the scope of his study means he can give little more than a brief overview of the status and history of Catalan culture, focusing on its contested status and claims to a postcolonial condition. The central problem for King is that the limited postcolonial approaches to Catalan literature thus far fail to adequately explore the multiple valencies of Catalan culture, most especially where that culture is expressed in Castilian.

Drawing on the theories of Benedict Anderson, chapter 1 looks at the development of the myths of Catalan cultural autonomy, in particular in relation to Spanish culture. Ranging from the eighteenth century to the aftermath of the Civil War, King explores how language became the centre-piece of Catalan identity, considering in particular how and why writers in Castilian are elided as non-Catalan. Defending their right to be considered Catalan writers, even though their literary language is Castilian, King presents them as a challenge to any easy identification between language and identity. Chapter 2 explores further this "greu problema de la identitat," tracing a brief history of the presence of Castilian in Catalonia—from the Casp constitution onwards. Negotiating the definitions of Catalan literature presented by a series of literary histories, King aligns himself with more expansive representations such as that of Rubió i Balaguer (Humanisme i Renaixement, Barcelona, 1990). Indeed, he claims that 'Catalan' writers in Castilian occupy a third space from which to challenge the norms of Spanish and Catalan literature. At the same time, he recognizes the uneven power relations between Catalan and Castilian, examining both the treatment of Catalan literature in translation in chapter 3 and representation of the experience of non-Catalan speaking immigrants in Catalonia in chapter 4. Although he recognizes the values of texts like Paco Candel's Els altres catalans (1964) in addressing different discourses of integration, assimilation and exclusion, he argues that they do not achieve a 'satisfactory' discourse of inclusion.

Chapter 5 centres on how the key myths of Catalan unity and hegemony—from the Senyera and the Segadors to excursionisme and the Catalan language—are deconstructed in Juan Marsé's El amante bilingüe (1990) and Montserrat Roig's L'òpera quotidiana (1982). Drawing on the theories of Judith Butler to explain the theatricality of both texts, King shows how Roig, in particular, offers some liberation from rigid definitions of cultural identity. Yet in chapter 6 he uses Ramon Pallicé's reading of the War of Succession in Cap de brot (1982) alongside Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's exploration of the diverse effects of the Spanish Civil War in El pianista (1985) to show how cultural identity is in fact determined by historical experience, tracing its relationship with the present. These diverse strands of analysis are woven together in the final chapter in calling for a redefinition of the relationship between Catalan literature and identity. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories and approaches associated with Cultural Studies, King ultimately wishes for a vision of Catalan literature that might include Manolo Reyes as well as Colometa, intertwining different authors and texts to achieve "una visión compleja, múltiple y a menudo conflictiva de la Cataluña y la catalanidad que todos escriben" (166).

Whilst it is undoubtedly important to look at Catalan literature in (multi-)cultural terms, and to recognise that most literature in Catalan represents only a part...