Tiempo De Silencio Research Articles

El hombre supera infinitamente al hombre: el mundo, el demonio y la carne en "La Sotana" de Rodrigo Rubio

La sotana, novela de Rodrigo Rubio publicada en 1968, refleja el tormento vivido `por una parte del del clero español en la época franquista y más en los años posteriores al Concilio Vaticano II. Este artículo intenta profundizar en el tema analizando la actitud y las reflexiones de los diferentes personajes que animan sus páginas. Además se quiere poner de relieve la profunda relación que el texto del escritor albaceteño entretiene con la novela de George Bernanos Diario de un cura rural, publicada en Francia en 1936 y difundida España ya en los primeros años sesenta. en fin, se quiere subrayar la presencia en La sotana de varios elementos de renovación formal. A pesar de ser una novela de corte realista no resulta exenta de algunas de las técnicas narrativas tan en boga en España a partir de la publicación de Tiempo de silencio en1962. La sotana, a novel by Rodrigo Rubio published in 1968 reflects the torment experienced by a part of the Spanish clergy in the Franco era and in the years following the Second Vatican Council. The purpose of this article is to deepen the topic by analyzing the acctitude and reflections of the different characters that animate its pages. Furthermore, we want to highlight the deep relationship between the text of the Albacete writer and the novel by George Bernanos Diario de un cura rural, published in France in 1936 and spread in Spain since the early sixties. Finally, we want to underline the presence in La Sotana of several elementsof formal renewal. Despite being a realistic novel, it presents some narrative techniques so popular in Spain since the publication of Tiempo de Silencio in 1962.

멜랑콜리 증후와 애도의 부재 -루이스 마르틴 산토스의 『침묵의 시간 Tiempo de silencio』

The structural novel Tiempo de silencio published in 1962 by Luis Martín Santos is part of a new movement of novel aesthetic in the 1960s, which seeks to explore the structure of individual consciousness and social context. By delving into the representation of melancholy and absence of mourning in the novel, this article analyzes the structure of consciousness shaped under Franco''s closed system. Martín Santos suggests using the term ‘Spanish complex’ instead of Spanish nationality, in order to take a new approach to Spanish problems, which were mainly discussed by the 98 generation in terms of national and economic backwardness. In this novel, the author criticizes the social structure by employing symptoms of melancholy as an aesthetic strategy. Drawing on various signs of melancholy, such as absence of ideal, narcissistic degeneration and self-dissolution, he tries to uncover underlying structural problems of Spanish society. The study also deals with how the structure of a person’s normal desire is negatively and destructively affected as the absence of public mourning disavows and hinders personal mourning for the loss of objective. This article ultimately aims to show that the melancholy in Tiempo de silencio is not merely a pathological symptom of an individual, but a representational mechanism that reveals the abnormalities of the self suffering from Franco''s closed social structure.

Monólogos y Polifonía en Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martin Santos

Monologues and Polyphony in "Tiempo de silencio" by Luis Martín-Santos
 ABSTRACT: Our article, titled "The Polyphony in the Monologues of Tiempo de silencio by Luis Martín-Santos," aims to provide a descriptive analysis of the phenomenon of polyphony in monologues, as well as to explore how this polyphony contributes to the literary richness of the novel. The presence of monologues in Tiempo de silencio is distinctive, not only because they serve as a narrative device but also because they offer insights into the characters' inner thoughts, intimate reflections, and the convergence of multiple voices that create intricate architectures within the text. Therefore, we argue that Tiempo de silencio is a polyphonic work. Through the analysis of polyphonic monologues, we seek to observe and support the following hypothesis: the monologues crafted by Martín-Santos are vital elements that contribute to the construction of the novel's fictional universe. These monologues allow for a profound characterization of the novel's characters, as they reveal their inner conflicts, contradictions, frustrations, and moral turpitude. By delving into the polyphony of monologues, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the intricate psychological and emotional landscapes of the characters in Tiempo de silencio.
 RESUMEN: Nuestro artículo, titulado "La polifonía en los monólogos de Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martín-Santos", tiene como objetivo proporcionar un análisis descriptivo del fenómeno de la polifonía en los monólogos, así como explorar cómo esta polifonía contribuye a la riqueza literaria de la novela. La presencia de monólogos en Tiempo de silencio es distintiva, no solo porque sirven como dispositivo narrativo, sino también porque ofrecen una visión de los pensamientos internos, reflexiones íntimas y la convergencia de múltiples voces que crean arquitecturas intrincadas dentro del texto. Por lo tanto, sostenemos que Tiempo de silencio es una obra polifónica. A través del análisis de los monólogos polifónicos, buscamos observar y respaldar la siguiente hipótesis: los monólogos elaborados por Martín-Santos son elementos vitales que contribuyen a la construcción del universo ficticio de la novela. Estos monólogos permiten una caracterización profunda de los personajes de la novela, ya que revelan sus conflictos internos, contradicciones, frustraciones y depravaciones morales. Al adentrarnos en la polifonía de los monólogos, nuestro objetivo es proporcionar una comprensión integral de los intrincados paisajes psicológicos y emocionales de los personajes en Tiempo de silencio.

Buero Vallejo’s Experiment in Existential Psychology: Traces of Martín-Santos’ Tiempo de silencio in La doble historia del doctor Valmy

In this article, I explore the kinship between Buero Vallejo’s play La doble historia del doctor Valmy (1964) and Martín-Santos’ novel, Tiempo de silencio (1962) that is based on existential psychology. I argue that Buero was not only influenced by Martín-Santos’ writings on existential psychology, but that his play in fact mimics Martín-Santos’ novel as an experiment in existential psychology. After an explanation of the difference between existential philosophy, existential psychology, and existential psychoanalysis, I explore the connections between the two works that are based on similarities between the protagonists and narrators, the topic of castration, the presence of the grandmother as an archetypal figure, the use of irony and silence as they relate to the narrative structure of the works, and the role of the reader and spectator in the novel and the play. After considering these points of comparison, I broach the question of the relative success or failure of the authors’ experiments in existential psychology, as well as the relevance of said experiments with regard to post-Civil War Spain and the Franco regime.

Influencia del contexto en la estética de la narrativa de posguerra

El objetivo de este artículo es revisar el contexto de la posguerra española y establecer su relación con la estética literaria de las diferentes promociones de narradores. Tras un esbozo del panorama socioeconómico, se analizan las características de los primeros escritores de posguerra y las peculiaridades de la novela existencial, partiendo de las primeras obras de Cela y Laforet. Seguidamente, nos centramos en la generación del medio siglo y sus dos corrientes, la novela social y el neorrealismo. Por último, se reflejan los cambios estéticos de la década de 1960 a partir de Tiempo de silencio.

In Search of an Alternative Biopolitics: Anti-bullfighting, Animality, and the Environment in Contemporary Spain by Katarzyna Olga Beilin

Reviewed by: In Search of an Alternative Biopolitics: Anti-bullfighting, Animality, and the Environment in Contemporary Spain by Katarzyna Olga Beilin Mary-Anne Vetterling Beilin, Katarzyna Olga. In Search of an Alternative Biopolitics: Anti-bullfighting, Animality, and the Environment in Contemporary Spain. Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2015. Pp. 305. ISBN 978-0-81421-290-5. In Search of an Alternative Biopolitics: Anti-bullfighting, Animality, and the Environment in Contemporary Spain fuses Animal Studies with Environmental Studies to produce a brilliant interpretation of contemporary Spain. On the book's cover, there is an image of a bull outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao created by painted semi-naked human bodies that is a striking visual representation of one of the principal motifs of this study: the bullfight as symbolized by both human and non-human animals. Beilin's extensive scholarship on the subject enlightens the reader on the various ways in which the bullfight can be used to interpret Spanish culture in the past and in the present. She pays special attention to the human and the non-human animal and demonstrates the parallels between the cruel mistreatment of both humans (women, the poor, and undocumented aliens) and animals in daily life and war to reveal the biopolitics in Spain, past, present, and future. Attention is also paid to necropolitics, biotechnology, biocapitalism, bioeconomy, the Holocene and the Anthropocene. There is also an important discussion about Genetically Modified Organisms in Spain. In addition to discussing major Spanish thinkers such as Larra, Ortega y Gasset, Américo Castro, Unamuno, Noel, Savater, Casal, and Riechmann, she backs up her ideas with theories by Foucault, Latour, Haraway, Morton, Nussbaum, Agamben, Esposito, Bennett, Mbembe, Heise, and Derrida, to name of few of the leaders in the fields of Ecocriticism and Animal Studies. Beilin's analysis of the animal world in Lorca, Buero Vallejo, Martín Santos (Tiempo de silencio), Pardo-Bazán, Clarín, Baroja, Mayorga (Las últimas palabras de Copito de Nieve, Palabra de perro, animales nocturnos, La paz perpetua), Goytisolo, Fernández Mallo (Nocilla Experience), Montero (Lágrimas en la lluvia), among other Spanish writers, is insightful and brilliant. Equally important are her analyses of animals in films by Buñuel (Las Hurdes, L'Age D'Or, and Le Phantôme de la liberté—especially the liberation of the zoo animals at the end), Saura (La caza), Berger (Blancanieves), Almodóvar (Matador), and Gonzalez Iñárritu (Biutiful). It is important to note that in this book she writes about animals in general, not just bulls, and adds, for example, some interesting facts about Copito de Nieve (the albino ape of the Barcelona zoo). There are, however, some areas that I wish the author had covered in her analyses. Although she mentions Goya's Tauromaquia she does not mention Picasso's works on the bullfight. Although she has an absolutely stunning analysis of animals in general in Buñuel's films, she fails to mention the bullfight in his La fièvre monte à El Pao. She could have also mentioned the bullfighter who is afraid of snakes in Almodóvar's Hable con ella. But these are minor omissions in a book that is brimming with an amazing amount of information and new ways of interpreting the role the animal world plays in Spanish culture and its important message for human and non-human animals on this planet. The breadth and depth of Beilin's scholarship and insights is dazzling. The author's commentary on King Juan Carlos's disastrous elephant expedition and subsequent abdication is fascinating when viewed in terms of the way she has interpreted the treatment of animals in other literary and cultural contexts earlier in her book and serves to solidify her theory that a more harmonious relationship between humans, animals, and the environment needs to take place if life on this planet is to survive. Other discussions of interest are Barcelona's ban on bullfighting, the Great Ape Project, Manolete, the Spanish obsession with death, animalization and anthropomorphism, ethical treatment of animals, the celebration of the International Day of Animal Rights, the War on Terror (torture of humans and animals), the role of synthetic life, Spain as a leader...

Spain and the antipsychiatric aesthetic

This article outlines a family resemblance in the work of authors and film-makers of the 1960s and 1970s in Spain. In the light of the international zeitgeist most often termed “antipsychiatry,” the works of Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and R. D. Laing (1927–1989) make up the critical focus for the formulation of an “antipsychiatric aesthetic” in Spanish literature. In the novels Tiempo de silencio (1961) by Luís Martín-Santos (1926–1964) and Volverás a Región (1967) by Juan Benet (1927–1993), and the film El espíritu de la colmena (1973) directed by Víctor Erice (1940–), this antipsychiatric aesthetic explores the relationship between doctor and patient in poetry as Scottish antipsychiatrist R. D. Laing had in practice. Contemporary to Foucault and Laing’s critique of the managerial doctor figure, these three texts re-enact this critique and extend its remit to embody the reader–writer/author–text/text–reader dialectic. Consequently, a specifically Iberian school of critical theory becomes apparent, that responds to the existential writings of Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936). Embedded within these poetics are attempts to reframe the ontological anxieties that stem from a subjective experience of silence and control.

Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature by Enric Bou (review)

Reviewed by: Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature by Enric Bou Robert Davidson Keywords Travel Literature, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Enric Bou, Robert Davidson, City, Borders, Rivers, Bearn, La Plaça Del Diamant, Eduardo Mendoza, Walter Benjamin, Ussr bou, enric. Invention of Space: City, Travel and Literature. Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2012. 278 pp. Enric Bou’s latest book is a compelling collection of essays and meditations on what it means to travel and experience both the new and familiar alike. Drawing on contemporary cultural theory for interpretive tools, the author explores “literary contact with [the] city, seen partly as a journey, or an exploration of the everyday” as well as “the various phases of [the] literary journey through the twentieth century, an experience that has become progressively easier and more affordable and has opened the door to contact with the Other” (13). Over eleven chapters, Bou’s analysis ranges from the nature of the literary city and concepts of Iberian comparativism, tourism, the experience of exile, and literary engagements with the nonplace. Along the way, specific cities such as Madrid, Paris and Barcelona receive attention—with the Catalan capital capturing the lion’s share. Invention of the City is without a doubt an ambitious book, but I would argue that its great strength lies precisely in its sheer breadth. It is not often that one picks up a volume with the range of this one, and it is to Bou’s credit that it works. Bou is adept at juggling many different texts as he develops his arguments, and is able to draw very productively on examples from across the spectrum of European literature. Likewise, his use of theory is judicious and appropriate. Themes and topics drive this work, not any fealty to fashionable critics. If anything, Bou goes against the grain by steadfastly “normalizing” Catalan literature. What I mean [End Page 485] by this is that he unapologetically and matter-of-factly integrates literary production from Catalonia—in both Catalan and Spanish—into the overarching arguments that he presents. Of course, the strong presence of Barcelona drives this to a certain extent, but nevertheless, for the Hispanist or Iberian Studies reader it is most refreshing to see. Chapter 1, “Reading the City,” serves as the book’s introduction, and while Bou invokes such heavyweight critics as Halbwachs, Nora, Augé, and Benjamin, he nevertheless focuses his study through the lens of literature: “Literary texts open up a line of inquiry into the city, which has no comparison in the social science field. Literature allows us to discuss the notion of urbs and civitas, the transformation of space, the juxtaposition of layers” (23). Intrigued by how literature influences urban image formation, and at the same time cognizant of the ways in which the concept of the city changes literature, the author then briefly points to how these rubrics are at play in the cases of Madrid and Barcelona, thus setting the stage for analyses to come. Before delving directly into city literature, though, Bou first outlines his approach to comparativism in the Iberian Peninsula. His take is unique and inspired by cultural geography. Here, he considers the social construction of place, landscape, and experience through a reading of mapping processes and literary engagements with rivers. Nicely illustrated by a series of plates, this second chapter sees the author put his nonhierarchical take on peninsular cultures into practice in a distinctive way. “Borders in the City: Rewriting Walls” is the Madrid-centric third chapter. Informed by work on borders by Predrag Matvejetić, Étienne Balibar and Marc Augé, as well as by the spatial theory of Deleuze and Guatarri, Bou uses Madrid for his discussion of urban boundaries. Works discussed here include Cela’s La colmena, Martín-Santos’s canonical Tiempo de silencio, and Gómez de la Serna’s intriguing and cultural studies-friendly, El Rastro. The author’s conclusion that heterotopias “establish borders inside the city, which can be easily crossed but that delimitate strong separations between regular and experimental life, allowing for an expansion of the limits of space” is convincing (97). For its part, “Decrèpita i teatral? On Literary Explorations of Barcelona” is a...

SOBRE CARNES Y VIDAS DESNUDAS EN <i>TIEMPO DE SILENCIO</i> DE LUIS MARTÍN-SANTOS

Under the context of the historical period known as “franquismo español,” this essay analizes the desubjectification of the Spanish subject. Through an examination of the novel Tiempo de silencio by Luis Martín-Santos, this essay demonstrates that the Franquista State, reduced the subject and its body in maleable and collective flesh to allow the emergence of the new Spanish subject.

Luis Martín-Santos ante la censura: las vicisitudes editoriales de Tiempo de silencio

Se estudia la relación de Luis Martín-Santos con la censura franquista a través del examen de los documentos relativos a su producción literaria y científica conservados en el Archivo General de la Administración. El análisis se centra especialmente en las vicisitudes editoriales de Tiempo de silencio: se hacen públicos por primera vez todos los informes de los censores y las cartas que cruzaron la editorial y los órganos estatales. Con estos expedientes se puede trazar la trayectoria de la novela y dilucidar las razones que llevaron a las relevantes supresiones de orden moral de la primera edición y a la parcial restauración de las tachaduras en la segunda. El descubrimiento del manuscrito original ha permitido también el cotejo con la princeps, que ha explicitado en primer lugar un constante proceso de normalización lingüística. Además, se ha destacado la presencia de variantes y de alguna lección errónea tanto en la primera edición como en la “definitiva” de 1980.

Cáncer, chabolas y castración: el Madrid de la posguerra en <i>Tiempo de silencio</i>, de Luis Martín-Santos

A partir de tres elementos textuales: el cáncer en ratones, la vida en chabolas y la castración, se construye una metonimia del Madrid de la posguerra española en la novela Tiempo de silencio. Los valores simbólicos de estas imágenes construyen una ciudad que condiciona el fracaso y la exclusión final del protagonista y, por ende, plantean una crítica al ambiente de la dictadura franquista.

El mal de España: parodia de la visión organicista de la nación en "Tiempo de silencio", de Luis Martín Santos

Fecha de recepción:­9­ de ­noviembre­ de­ 2009. ­Fecha de aceptación:­27 ­de­ octubre ­de­ 2010. En Tiempo de silencio (1962), Luis Martín Santos parodia el discurso organicista que los escritores de la Generación del 98 utilizó para hablar del“mal de España”. Martín Santos reflexiona sobre la identidad nacional yla circunstancia concreta de la España de la posguerra, al mismo tiempo que pone en evidencia el esencialismo, el fatalismo y las contradicciones de los noventa y ochistas. Lo hace por medio de la caracterización irónica de Pedro, encarnación paródica del “cirujano de hierro”, ese hombre superior y providencial que supuestamente tendría que “regenerar” la patria, pero que termina fracasado e inmerso en el más absoluto nihilismo.

Narrating the Organic City: A Lefebvrian Approach to City Planning, the Novel, and Urban Theory in Spain

concept for the urban planners of the 1800s and 1900s to justify their large-scale city plans, a few twentieth-century writers appropriate it as a key tool in the contestation of the overly rational design of city-space. For these writers, the city is neither a simple coherent system nor an abstract totality, but an evolving totality constituted through difference and the same inner contradictions recounted in Marx’s 1867 critique Capital. The famous anti-urbanist Jane Jacobs delivers a succinct commentary from this perspective in her watershed work The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), where she defines the city as a living entity ruled not by geometrical or algebraic principle but rather by irreducible complexity: Cities happen to be problems in complexity, like the life sciences. They present situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways. Cities, again like the life sciences, do not exhibit one problem in organized complexity, which if understood explains all. They can be analyzed into many such problems or segments which, as in the case of the life sciences, are also related with one another. The variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are “interrelated into an organic whole.” (433, original emphasis) The city poses not merely one problem that can be subjected to a univocal or planar logic, as the planning practices of Haussmann and Cerda suggest, but instead a number of problems that cohabit with each other. These problems must be understood relationally, each according to the terms of the next—which presents an obstacle to simplistic methodological postures. Narratives can sometimes attain this understanding. In Spain, the ambitious works of both Martin-Santos (Tiempo de silencio, 1961) and Gopegui (La escala de los mapas, 1993) problematize a simplistic approach to the urban by employing a complex narrative style that portrays the city of Madrid not as a unified whole but as a living organism structured by internal difference. Tiempo de silencio is undoubtedly one of the most important literary renderings of an alternative twentieth-century Narrating the Organic City 377

Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema (review)

Faulkner, Sally. Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema. London: Tamesis Books, 2004. 198 pp. Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema explores formal and ideological issues in the adaptation of twelve works to Spanish cinema and television. Sally Faulkner’s examples are drawn from the “late dictatorship, transitional and democratic periods” (8) to provide a “historicist approach” (8). Her analysis counteracts previous ahistorical structuralist studies – and even Fidelity Criticism – in film and television adaptations. Chapter One emphasizes particularly the ideological context of literary adaptations of “dissident, auteurist films and work that might be described as consensual [cine oficial] and commercialized” (12) during Franco’s regime and proposes commenting on what they have to say on issues that range from gender, phallocentrism and patriarchy to their contrast of rural and urban spaces, and the function of nostalgia for the city (14), everything under a theoretical postmodern and historiographic framework. Chapter two is devoted to exploring Mario Camus’s film adaptation (1982) of Camilo José Cela’s novel La Colmena and Vicente Aranda’s film adaptation (1986) of Martín Santos’ Tiempo de Silencio. Sally Faulkner attempts to go beyond previous critical studies on both film adaptations – mainly based on a structuralist model or “as betrayals of their literary originals” (19) – by providing an alternative study that addresses ideological questions by reading these adaptations as “histories” of the decade in which were produced, that is, by revealing the historical, social, political and cultural issues of 1980’s that use the past as an indirect referent for the present (21-22). Faulkner’s reading of Camus ’s film La Colmena discloses the “constructedness of historical representation ” and the “artless quest for authenticity” (33), a postmodern combination that both mimics and criticizes Franco’s official rhetoric. Moreover, the author – relying on Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern theories – proposes a reading of Aranda’s adaptation of Tiempo de Silencio as a “postmodern historiographic metafiction” (37) and illustrates the dichotomy between history and aesthetics, between the possibilities of an authentic historical representation and an allegedly impossibility of it. Chapter three discusses four films that contrast rural and urban spaces in an attempt to deconstruct Francoist ideological views which traditionally portrayed the rural as an idyllic locus – representing national identity – and portrayed the industrialized city as an “urban nightmare” (49). Key to this analysis is the discussion of the concepts of visuality and hapticality, and Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of absolute spaces – “space as ‘lived’” (51), and abstract spaces – “space as ‘conceived’” (51). Moreover, the author discusses the paradoxical relationship between nostalgia and rural space, and violence and urban space, a fact that seems to support dictatorship’s conception of both rural and urban spaces. Reseñas 111 Through a comparison between Cela’s novel and Ricardo Franco’s film adaptation , Faulkner explores the role of violence in “denouncing the deprivation of rural space” (59) and its role in stripping the film of any nostalgic element. Faulkner reads Los santos inocentes as a “work of nostalgia” (61) towards the rural space, both in the novel and in the film. However, the author also points out that this allegedly enjoyable nostalgic view – portrayed through the relationship between man and nature – obviates disturbing contradictory aspects of such nostalgia. In the film adaptation Historias del Kronen (Armendáriz 1995), the author discusses the cinematic construction of violence and nostalgia in the city as both abstract and absolute spaces. The same questions of violence , alienation and nostalgia within these spaces are also explored in the film adaptation of the play Carícies (Pons 1998). The fourth chapter focuses on Galdós’ novel Fortunata y Jacinta and Clarín’s La Regenta, and their subsequent screen adaptations. In the case of Galdós’ adaptations, the author approaches these “visual narratives” (84) – in film (Fons 1970) and television (Camus 1980) – using a theoretical feminist, psychoanalytic and filmic framework to discuss issues of gender and audience identification. Faulkner proposes a substitute model for audience identification – the ‘reaction shot’ – especially in adaptations made for television, which allow for an innovative “Re-vision” (88) of preceding textual and visual patriarchal readings of the works. A key element to reading Galdós’ visual adaptations is the ideology of ángel del hogar...

Psychoanalysing the Nation. A Comparative Reading of António Lobo Antunes’Memória de elefante and Luis Martín‐Santos’s Tiempo de silencio

This article argues that Portuguese novelist António Lobo Antunes’ first work of fiction, Memória de elefante, can usefully be viewed in a comparative context alongside Spaniard Luis Martín‐Santos’s novel Tiempo de silencio. Both novels represent a narrative response to dictatorship, and they display common strategies to engage their readers in a psychoanalytic interpretation of late twentieth‐century Spain and Portugal and the existence of complicit attitudes to dictatorship therein. A reading of Lobo Antunes’ little discussed novel in the light of works by a comparable Spanish novelist, about whom there is a strong critical tradition, highlights significant new features and refutes the prevailing view of his early work as being postcolonial.

Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to "La Movida" (review)

Reviewed by: Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to "La Movida" David Vilaseca Keywords David Vilaseca, Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to “La Movida,” Queer Theory, Gender, Lesbian Writers, Ana María Moix, Cristina Peri Rossi, Sequential Art, Popular Culture, Feminism, Homosexuality Pérez-Sánchez, Gema . Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco to "La Movida". New York: State U of New York P, 2007. 257 pp. Queer Transitions in Contemporary Spanish Culture constitutes an important and timely addition to the growing field of queer studies in modern Peninsular Spanish culture. As the author rightly points out, the most recent developments in this discipline (the studies by, among other critics, Robert Richmond Ellis, Josep-Anton [End Page 465] Fernàndez, and Ricardo Krauel) have tended to focus on male authors and on highbrow literature, while women writers and popular and underground cultural products have been granted far less attention. Queer Transitions seeks to correct this state of affairs by placing a distinctive (albeit nonexclusive) focus on lesbian writers (Ana María Moix and Cristina Peri Rossi), and by adding an in-depth analysis of popular culture, particularly of the distinctively urban phenomenon of sequential art (comic books). Pérez-Sánchez's analysis is driven by an impressive command of a very wide range of contemporary critical sources, combining Marxist-influenced cultural studies approaches with psychoanalytically inclined queer and feminist approaches through close readings of "texts" understood in the broadest poststructuralist sense. Pérez-Sánchez argues that the process of political and cultural transition from dictatorship to democracy in the Spanish state can be read allegorically as a shift from a self-loathing "homosexual" model to a pluralized "queer" body. Chapter 1 examines the infamous Ley de Peligrosidad Social and fascist juridical commentaries to study the emphasis placed by the dictatorship on the legal containments and codification of homosexuality. Pérez-Sánchez argues that Francoism employed a conceptual model of "internalised homophobia and . . . self-loathing" to imagine its regime, maintaining that the dictatorship occupied, in relation to the rest of the Western world, the very position in which it placed women and sodomites (13). Chapter 2 analyzes the textual strategies deployed by Ana María Moix in order to counter the silencing of lesbianism while still managing to evade the Francoist censor. Pérez-Sánchez unravels the complex web of silences in and around Moix's novel Julia, some of which, she argues, represent real lapses into voicelessness, while others speak out eloquently but only to attuned, queer readers ("lectora entendida" [36]). Chapter 3 bridges the last years of the Franco regime and the first years of the Spanish democracy by linking the Francoist codification of the homosexual and three canonical novelists' reworkings of masculinity. Pérez Sánchez argues that Camilo J. Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte, Luis Martín Santos's Tiempo de silencio, and Juan Goytisolo's Reivindicación del conde don Julián dramatize "an acute crisis of masculinity" (65), while Eduardo Mendicutti's Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera provides the final, constestatory link to this genealogy by challenging heteronormativity and proposing an alternative identificatory model for the reader in the figure of a male to female transsexual. Chapter 4 analyzes how Peri Rossi's La nave de los locos weaves together high and low culture, modern and postmodern cultural references, in order to make a parody of hegemonic notions of sexual difference, proposing instead a more fluid, indeterminate sexuality that defies definition through strict gender binaries (137). Finally, chapter 5 establishes a comparison between the contributions to the governmentally subsidized comic book Madriz by Ana Juan, Ana Miralles, and Asun Balzola, [End Page 466] and those by the gay sequential artist Nazario to the Barcelona underground independent magazine El Víbora. Pérez-Sánchez argues, counterintuitively and somewhat controversially, that the officially subsidized nature of Madriz opened up a space that enabled women and queers to tell their stories in ways that could be much more transgressive and influential than the "supposedly underground representations of gay male life" in Nazario's work (193). Pérez-S...

Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem by Chris Perriam (review)

818 Reviews reference to the rural/urban divide in Spain, its progressive growth and the interac? tion that results from this division. The main objective ofthe book, which is achieved despite its ambitiousness, is to explore the relationship between urban and rural spaces and the way in which this relationship changes over time, influenced by the globalization process and by the Spanish postmodern condition. The result of the study is an in-depth analysis of urban-rural relations and confrontations in a variety of cultural productions, both filmic and literary,ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s. The author chooses a number of emblematic pieces, such as Tiempo de silencio, Surcos, El cuarto de atrds, La prima Angelica and iQue he hechoyo para mereceresto?, and successfully analyses them from a variety of angles. He delves into the way in which cultural, social, and economic changes in Spain are reflected in the cultural production of its writers and film directors, who, in one way or another, continue to search for identity as a reaction against the globalization process. The book is extremely well presented and clearly organized with an extensive and up-to-date bibliography and filmography. As regards structure and layout, the chap? ters are grouped together in sections, which makes the reading very easy and enjoyable while maintaining academic rigour. Every chapter has a conclusion that not only summarizes the main ideas but also points forward to aspects dealt with in subsequent chapters. The only defect is that the general conclusion at the end is rather abstract and fails to tie up the loose ends and provide an overarching summary of the main concepts that have been discussed. Postmodern Paletos is a remarkable piece of work, a relevant contribution to the growing field of Spanish cultural studies and a recommended addition to reading lists of courses on twentieth-century Spanish culture. University of Limerick Maria Cinta Ramblado-Minero Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem. By Chris Perriam. (Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture, 11) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. ix + 22ipp. ?35. ISBN 0-19-815996-x. Within the plethora of books published on contemporary Spanish cinema over the past fiveyears, Chris Perriam's Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema really does stand out. For, unlike a substantial proportion of scholars working in this field, Per? riam maps out a completely differentdirection for Spanish film studies by moving away from a primary concentration on the auteur, or thematics of gender, sexuality, nationality and textuality, to posit an approach which centres on star studies. While Rob Stone's excellent recent introduction to film in Spain, Spanish Cinema (Lon? don: Longman, 2001), does provide brief overviews of Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz (pp. 183-205), few have taken up the chal? lenge of approaching Spanish cinema through the prisms of star studies. Ginette Vincendeau's 2000 publication, Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (London and New York: Continuum), presents an exemplary model in charting twentieth-century French film through a select number of male and female stars from Max Linder to Juliette Binoche. Perriam never attempts to emulate Vincendeau's approach or that of others who have defined the terrain of star studies within filmscholarship (Richard Dyer, Steven Cohan, Paul McDonald, Geoffrey Macnab, Christine Gledhill, and others). Rather, while drawing on previous publications in this area, he carves out a differentline of enquiry, examining the national cinema of Spain through a select number of male case studies, figures whose body of work comes in the period of post-Francoism. The book's catchy subtitle ('From Banderas to Bardem') is slightly misleading as the book's firstchapter dissects the work of a marginally older actor, MLR, 99.3, 2004 819 Imanol Arias?although, like Bardem, he made his film debut in 1982?and the fi? nal chapter concludes with an assessment of the twenty-something figures currently enjoying top billing in the films ofthe last decade (Eduardo Noriega, Fele Martinez, Liberto Rabal, and Juan Diego Botto). A minor quibble about the subtitle aside, this really is a critically informed, beau? tifully written, lucid account of each actor's oeuvre. Chapter 1...

España cambia de piel (1954‐1964): the mobile nation

España cambia de piel (1954‐1964): the mobile nation

Irony, the Grotesque, and the Dialectics of Reading in Luis Martín-Santos's Tiempo de silencio

This article considers Martín-Santos's novel, Tiempo de silencio, from the point of view of the role that it casts for the reader and suggests that, although usually seen as a highly innovative text, it is actually quite traditional. In Libertad, temporalidad y transferencia, Martín-Santos compares the process of psychoanalytic cure to literary narrative, suggesting that the patient must develop a sense of ironic distance from life's events through the creation of an indeterminate space in which dispassionate interpretation is possible. Similarly, the reader of Tiempo de silencio must become detached from a text that is not just ironic but also grotesque. The novel functions rather like Iser's reception theory, forcing the reader to re-evaluate situations that are at first merely ironic but then evoke a troubling emotional and visceral reaction. It is this second move, however, that creates problems for the author's intended aim of liberating his reader from oppressive official discourse. The creation of ambiguities through the use of ironic discourse is undermined as grotesquery makes the weight of Martín-Santos's moral and ethical position clear, and thus undermines the existentialist aim of reciprocal respect for the other's, and hence one's own, freedom.

Mechanized Imagery in Tiempo de silencio

Principles of mechanistic organization in Tiempo de silencio (1962) constitute a powerful image that both structures the novel and governs the activities in its text world. Such characteristics are common to the traditional conception of human organizations: compartmentalization, division of labor, and control from the top to the bottom of a chain of command. Luis Martin-Santos's novel creates a society organized in this manner, and introduces such a process in the cemetery scene. An oblique reference intimates a system that recalls concepts of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the industrial theorist who planned organizations as if they were machines. Martin-Santos's ironic placement of mechanistic imagery in this inefficient system also is apparent in other representations of official state sectors, such as the judicial bureaucracy and the police force. The system gives no consideration to human needs, and the citizens suffer silently in acquiescence.