Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition by Lisa Vollendorf (review)

Abstract

MLR, 99.2, 2004 517 polemics about free will and predestination. Such examples are not uncommon. The translator could usefully have sought advice from specialists in translating Golden Age Spanish of this kind. But the translation improves as it goes on; the experience gained could perhaps have led to some revision ofthe earlier chapters. It is, none the less, always encouraging to see spiritual classics of the Golden Age finding a modern voice in translation.. If Eladia Gomez-Posthill has not always managed to be as accurate, precise, and readable as one might wish, she has made a brave attempt, and one can only applaud the initiative. St Catherine's College, Oxford Colin Thompson Recovering Spain's Feminist Tradition. Ed. by Lisa Vollendorf. New York: The Modern Language Association ofAmerica. 2001. xii + 407pp. $19.75. ISBNo87352 -274-5. The aim of this collection is to trace the development of Spanish feminist conscious? ness through a broad range of genres, topics, and time periods (p. 11). However, given the scope of this project, it was inevitable that it would come up against limitations of space and thereforecoverage. As editor Lisa Vollendorf acknowledges, there is under-representationof minority-language writers. In particular, there are no Basque writers. With a publication date of 2001, and a bias towards the twentieth century, which is the longest of the three sections in the book, it is perhaps unfortunate that the choice was made to exclude the younger generation of women beginning to publish in the 1990s who demonstrate the vitality and diversity of women's intellectual, social, and political engagement in contemporary Spain. Inclusion would have allowed for the examination of new media such as cyberspace as productive arenas for feminist cultural production. The title ofthe collection suggests a rather broader range of fem? inist practice than is in fact covered. With the exception of Maria Asuncion Gomez's piece on the anarchist movement Mujeres Libres, which analyses film, the focus is very much on writing to the exclusion of other cultural practices. Using the word 'recovery' in the title implies the recuperation of a tradition that has been neglected. While, in her introduction, Vollendorf makes a persuasive argument for the need to contest the marginalization of Spanish feminist writing within inter? national debate, by partly focusing on canonical writers who have been much studied elsewhere, the text serves to silence other voices, particularly those of the working class. That is not to say that lesser-known authors such as the medieval poet Florencia Pinar are not included. However, it would have been welcome to see more work like that of Maria Cristina Urruela on popular genres often dismissed as second-rate or inherently conservative. The exclusion of writers from the Franco period is another surprising omission. Although it could be argued that these writers have been extensively studied as a group, there is room for analysis of the contradictions of the period with regard to gendered discourses. In particular, the apparent ideological homogeneity of right-wing women is a gap to be addressed. There is also a bias towards writers of fiction or autobiography. The fascinating and insightful work of feminist thinkers, critics, and philosophers (such as Celia Amoros), which is largely unknown outside Spain, is to a great extent overlooked. The text is divided into three sections. As is perhaps to be expected, given the increasing bias towards contemporary studies in academia, the shortest covers the fifteenthto seventeenth centuries, followed by the eighteenth to the nineteenth cen? turies, while the longest is the section on the twentieth century. Many of the essays are archaeological rather than analytical in feel in that the emphasis is very much on the project of recuperating a 'herstory' and presenting these writers to an audience 518 Reviews who may be unfamiliar with them. This occasionally leads to the rehearsing of old ground. Where the collection is most successful is in arguing for historicist readings which are contextually aware and engage with the cultural and social specificities of the texts and experiences addressed. There are a number of themes running through the essays, including the problem of taxonomy, in particular differentiatingbetween pro-woman and feminist, the limitations within which...