<i>Aquesta monstruosa bifurcació de la nostra ànima.</i> Catalanitat i monstruositat a <i>Pa negre</i> d'Emili Teixidor

Abstract

Summary: This article analyzes Emili Teixidor’s novel Pa negre with regard to the discursive construction of identity and the motif of monstrosity, which is a common image of identity and alterity in discourses of collective identity in general and Catalan identity discourses in particular. The novel narrates the coming-of-age story of the young Catalan Andreu, who grows up as the son of a Republican working-class family during the time after the Spanish Civil War. After eventually being adopted by a Catalan Francoist family, Andreu identifies himself as a “monster” who has betrayed his “origins” and now unifies two incompatible “natures” within himself. Linking Andreu’s development and final diagnosis with the classic Catalanist discourses of catalanitat and the Francoist discourses of españolidad and nacionalcatolicismo, the contribution concludes that Andreu’s transformation into a ‘hybrid identity monster’ is the result of the two incompatible nationalizations he received during his childhood and adolescence. As will be shown by intertextual and interdiscursive analysis, Andreu’s conflict represents the classic problem of the Catalan nation dominated by Spanish nationalism (according to Catalanist ideologues like Almirall and Prat de la Riba). The article ends with an allegorical interpretation of the protagonist, who personifies the Catalan nation during Francoism. Keywords: Emili Teixidor, monstrosity, Catalan identity discourses, Catalan and Spanish nationalism, intertextuality/interdiscursivity.