‘On historical sincerity’ and storytelling: The works of Luisa Etxenike

Abstract

This article is divided into three interconnected parts. The first part, written by Cristina Ortiz Ceberio, provides a brief overview of some key elements of the long-standing philosophical discussion on language and violence. The interpretative framework that language can provide to capture reality falls short when confronted with inexpressible experiences of horror and violence, and yet in the case of individual and historical injustices, the need to recount what happened in order to remember remains imperative. This quandary has implications for fiction-writing and it permeates contemporary Basque literature challenged with narrating the context of terrorist violence. The essay ‘On historical sincerity’ by Basque writer Luisa Etxenike included in the second section elaborates on the challenges faced by the author. In her essay, Etxenike stresses the need to engage political reality from an angle of historical sincerity. For Etxenike, historical sincerity in fiction-writing is the key for transmitting the complexity of what happened to younger generations. The third part of this article includes an interview with Etxenike about literature in the face of twenty-first-century challenges.