With David Becerra Mayor about the Civil War literary fashion
Since 1990 over 150 novels focusing on the Civil War were published in Spain. But according to the literary critic David Becerra Mayor these novels do not strive to offer an understanding of a historical conflict. Instead, the war is utilized merely as an attractive stage set. As a result, the novels only reproduce a long-surpassed myths of the Franco regime.
Since 1990 over 150 novels focusing on the Civil War were published in Spain. But according to the literary critic David Becerra Mayor these novels do not strive to offer an understanding of a historical conflict. Instead, the war is utilized merely as an attractive stage set. As a result, the novels only reproduce a long-surpassed myths of the Franco regime.
David Becerra Mayor
(born 1984) is a Spanish literary historian and critic. He received a
PhD in Spanish literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Initially, he specialized in the work of the poet Miguel Hernández and
other writers from the Republic period. Later on, he began focusing on
contemporary fiction that he analyzes in his books La novela de la
noideología and La guerra civil como moda literaria. He works in the
aesthetics and literature section of the Foundation for Marxist Studies.
Your latest book is titled Civil War as literary fashion [La GuerraCivil como moda literaria]. What initiated this fashion in the past twenty years?
It
is first of all important to remember that the Spanish transformation
from the Franco regime to democracy was based on a pact of silence and
forgetting. People were forced to only look ahead, into the future and
not open any old wounds. The Spanish society of the democratic
transformation was born with Lot´swife’s fear inside: it was forbidden
to look back to not turn into a pillar of salt. It had appeared to be
terrific news that suddenly so many novels about the Civil War started
to be published, seemingly breaking the silence. But it’s quickly turned
out that the Civil War is no more than a stage set.
Does this mean that the novels do not take historical events seriously?
They
are historical novels without historicity. The Civil War period is to
provide a contrast to the present. A conflicted past is to provide an
escape from the present that is considered to be dull and grey. It is
like a glittering mirror that Jameson speaks about in his book Postmodernism,
or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. If we look into these novels
for reflections of our faces, a blinding flash of light makes it
impossible to recognize ourselves. The light charms us, just like the
novels charm and entertain us. The impossibility to see one’s
reflection, ourselves in the past eventually deactivates our historical
experience and, as a result, we perceive past as a mythical time that
has nothing to do with us – as a closed epoch, which, in actuality
remains very much open.
Regardless, these novels are rather successful and widely read...
These
novels were successful because Spanish society began mobilizing in late
1990s, demanding, at the same time, to learn about its past. Historical
memory entered the services of a political agenda. These particular
novels depicted this social restlessness and at attempted to seize it to
deactivate its emancipatory and revolutionary potential. And so the
topic of the Civil War became literary fashion, but the war is merely a
stage, practically exotic, and in any case very much distant from the
present.
Some of the novels that you analyze in
your work were also published in Czech translation – including Soldiers
of Salamis [Soldados de Salamina] by Javier Cercas. Does the above said
apply to this book as well?
Yes, this novel too shows
depolitization of a historical conflict; done through a subjectivization
of the enemy. In his book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Slavoj Žižek
states that the silliest idea he has ever heard is the widespread
neoliberalist notion that an enemy is someone to whom we did not
sufficiently listen. For if we were to listen and hear the enemy, we
would subjectify, humanize, and view the enemy not as the other, but as
one who is not all that different from us. The novel Soldier of Salamis
is based on this idea: it picks up a version of one of the founders of
the Spanish fascism, Rafael Sánchez Mazas and spins a mechanism of
subjectivization that enables us to identify with it, empathize with
him, and feel a degree of complicity. This mechanism politically
deactivates the fascist. As a result, the novel achieves that we do not
perceive Sánchez Mazas as a fascist, but rather as a person with
internal struggles and conflicts. Just like us, after all. The necessary
and radical question
that my book strives to raise is: is he really just like us? I would
argue that not and this leads me to believe that we should not
depoliticize the Civil War, but rather try to understand the political
and social historical conflict that started it.
The
novelist and essayist Andrés Trapiello says that "the fascists won the
war but lost the history of literature." Would you agree?
No,
I categorically disagree with this sentence. Trapiello and other
critics and novelists put great effort into defending fascist writers,
according to them unjustly forgotten, and they ask us to stop thinking
about the events of 1936 and evaluate these writers from the literary
perspective. They say that we need to read them as writers, overlooking
their ideology. That is why Trapiello can say that the fascists won the
war but lost the history of literature. But that is certainly not the
case, particularly since the 20th century Spanish literary canon was
created during the Franco regime and the transformation toward democracy
did not do anything, or at least only very little to contest it.
So who are the defeated in literary history, then?
Since
we were unable to read their work, the defeated are all of the writers
who were murdered or forced to flee into an exile during the Civil War. A
paradigmatic case is Luisa Carnés, a writer who was forgotten no less
than twice, for she is a woman and a communist to boot. Her excellent
novel Tea Rooms was published in 1934 and then republished only a few
weeks ago. The writers of the socialist realism of 1950s – including the
late Armando López Salinas and Jesús López Pacheco – share a similar
path. So much work is still needed to be done; so much literary memory
must be saved.
You argue that the depolitization
of contemporary novels plays in favor of those who won the war. But has
openly fascist or falangist literature also emergedin contemporary Spain?
The
only writer who has publicly endorsed falangism was Manuel Maristany,
the author of La enfermera de Brunete, who passed away this year. This
novel features all present myths about the Franco crusade. For example
that the Spanish Republic introduced chaos and that is why the country
needed a „remedy;“ i.e. a military coup, to restore the order. Or that
the republic was a mere USSR satellite; that a communist revolution,
which the insurgents prevented from happening, was taking place in
Spain, and so on. These myths were part of the fascist propagation; a
way to justify the coup. Proper historians, such as Herbert Southworth,
have long since proved their mendacity. Even so, they continue to be
reproduced in novels of writers including Antonio Muñoz Molina or Andrés
Trapiello.
How do authors themselves respond to your critique?
Most
frequent is ignorance. Literary and cultural critique is rather weak in
Spain. Critique has never fulfilled its role here. It used to be
limited to praising works of the mainstream literature and marginalizing
dissenting, critical, counterhegemonic discourses. The reason is that
ignorance is more effective than confrontation of ideas.
But
you have recently engaged in a sharp polemics with a very popular
novelist Arturo PérezReverte who was upset that a „young Marxist“
thinks he can „create rules of writing a historical novel.“
That
is a different case since my book does not focus on his work. Reverte
argues that he responds to an article titled Ten Commandments on how to
write a novel about the Civil WarI published in an internet daily El
Confidencial, but I suspect he in fact responds to another two of my
articles from the same daily in which I critique his abridged version of
Don Quijote for the youth and his book Civil War told to the
youngsters. He gathered he was challenged but instead of presenting his
own arguments against mine, he reverted to personal attacks. That is no
setting for a discussion. But it is rather common writers connected with
„the 1978 regime,“ are not accustomed to discussing because they used
to be only praised. If someone suddenly critiques them, they do not know
how to respond so they feel insulted. I assume this is connected with a
lack of a democratic culture and believe that time will fix this.
To
what extent can an academic critic fulfill Walter Benjamin’s maxim
according to which a critic is a „strategist in the literary battle?“
I
have tried to stick to this first of thirteen of Benjamin’s theses as
best as I have been able to. The reason is that it is clear that the
class struggle happens in the literary field as well in the sense that
there are literary discourses that reproduce and legitimize the ideology
of the ruling class – just as this takes place in the mentioned novels
that I call „novels of non-ideology“ – and then, there is also
literature that opposes to this ideology. That means that literature too
participates in the ideological battle, and it is the critic’s role to
point this out. Both criticism and literature always assume a certain
side. There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to criticisms
and so we must pay attention to the ethical, moral, and political
positionality that the authors come from. The one who writes always
takes a particular position and side. For this reason is also important
to remind ourselves of what Benjamin adds in the second thesis: „He who
cannot take sides should keep silent.“
Michal Špína // A2 kulturní čtrnáctideník (nº 14, 2016): http://www.advojka.cz/archiv/2016/14/not-listening-to-the-enemy
