Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses by Aurélie Vialette

Abstract

Reviewed by: Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses by Aurélie Vialette Nicolás Fernández-Medina Vialette, Aurélie. Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses. Purdue UP, 2018. 280 pp. ISBN: 978-1-55753-823-9. Aurélie Vialette’s Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses argues that philanthropy in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain was anything but an altruistic and disinterested enterprise of human advancement and welfare. In Vialette’s analysis, philanthropy during this period in Spain (it should be noted that the overwhelming focus is on Barcelona) was a highly political, organized, and strategic endeavor coordinated by the bourgeoisie as a means of controlling the working class and regulating their aspirations for (revolutionary) change and social advancement. For Vialette, however, the complexities of power inherent in philanthropic engagement do not end here. The bourgeois quest for social control during a period of rapid industrial expansion in Spain involved “seducing” the working class into believing that social hierarchies and inequalities were in fact beneficial for the advancement of society in general. Thus, philanthropy “was used as a device to seduce the workers into entering structures of sociality to block the possible emergence of social conflicts and upward mobility” (4). At first glance, Vialette’s social control approach, which at times can be a bit heavy-handed in its application of Marxist and post-structuralist theories, might appear overly deterministic regarding philanthropic engagement, yet it powerfully succeeds in demonstrating through an array of primary materials and archival scholarship how philanthropy did in fact play a hand in shaping the social ethos of Spanish workers. Along with the Introduction and the Conclusion, the book is divided into 3 parts consisting of seven chapters. Part One, Staging Philanthropy, introduces “Musical Philanthropy.” The focus here is the composer, writer, and politician Josep Anselm Clavé and his choral groups (Cors de Clavé) of industrial workers. As Vialette demonstrates, the fact that illiterate industrial workers were exhibited on stage and dutifully trained to sing in harmony for Catalan society transformed this potentially revolutionary class into a “spectacle . . . of a peaceful collectivity” (41). In Chapter 2, “Archiving Philanthropy,” Vialette extends her research on Clavé inquiring into the construction of his archive. She proposes a theory of the private archive not as a “symbol of spontaneous authenticity” (a concept that remains somewhat undefined), but as the particular site in which cultural figures like Clavé could effectively place a blueprint, as it were, of their biographical persona for posterity. With Chapter 3, “Performing Los filántropos,” the book takes a turn toward theater in the analysis of an anonymous play Los filántropos written sometime between 1851 and 1900. While Vialette skillfully argues that the stage director’s edits of the play can be read as a type of “practice” of philanthropy (the stage director softened the play’s social critiques), various questions concerning the play’s possible staging, reception, and circulation problematize the larger argument that “performing philanthropy on stage transformed the theater into a tool that could transmit a discourse on how to critically perceive the implications of the philanthropic act in society” (103). Part Two, Bibliophilanthropy, begins with Chapter 4, “The Library Is the City,” which tackles the Centro de Lectura, first established in Barcelona in 1859, and how [End Page 185] it transformed workers’ (collective) reading practices and molded them into ideal citizens. In “Catechism of Industry,” Vialette effectively examines various conduct manuals that not only targeted workers’ behaviors, but also offered specific teachings about the necessity of social stratification. This part presents a convincing and rigorous examination of what can be understood as institutionalized reading (the highly structured and controlled space of the Centro de Lectura acts as a “microsociety,” as Vialette demonstrates) and the profound pedagogical function of conduct manuals in determining the proletariat’s notions about class conflict and violent radicalism. Once again, Vialette compellingly engages the theory of the spectacle to argue how philanthropy throughout this period desperately sought to “exhibit” docile workers conforming to bourgeois interests. Part Three, Philanthropy and the Female Working Class, is composed of Chapters 6, “The Potential Not to Be,” and Chapter 7, “The Art of Dying Well,” which round...