The monolingualism of identity or aporias from the end of the world: (indicial notes on Fogo cruzado)

Vidal Bouzon, �lvaro J.

Abstract

In 1989 the collection of drawings and short-stories in Galizan-Portuguese Fogo cruzado was published with an untitled and introductory non-literary text prepared by its authors. The process of its creation, publishing and reception was an extreme expression of the struggles determining cultural production in Galiza.

In this introductory piece, a collective authorship proclaims the impossibility of Galizan literature. The text articulates two dominant structural lines in the relationships of the Iberian peoples, a paradigm of which is Galizan society: the absolute uncaninness of an unheimlich Portugal for Spain; the sinister implications of that condition for history, societies and cultures in the Peninsula.

The most obvious crystalization of that structure is the sociolinguistic condition (especially in terms of standardization policies) of Portuguese in Galiza. This structure is determined by a double bind mechanism within the practices of, above all, intellectuals and politicians.

The prefatory text of Fogo cruzado is written in the long shadow of a Berlin Wall in imminent collapse, being the final spectacular effect of capitalism’s restructuring of its productive and reproductive spheres. In such a context, literature, as it has been progressively constituted by the rise of capitalism, is becoming more and more an archaelogical object.

This article proposes an aporetic approach to the impossibility of Galizan literature as constituting a paradigm for any national literary production at the end of the century. However, that paradigmatic effect is the specific result of the dislocation of a productive general condition: a non-literature within a defective nation and an excessive State.

Citation

Vidal Bouzon, Á. J. (2002). The monolingualism of identity or aporias from the end of the world: (indicial notes on Fogo cruzado). Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 3(2), https://doi.org/10.1080/1463620022000013983

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2002
• Deposit Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 29, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies
• Print ISSN: 1463-6204
• Electronic ISSN: 1463-6204
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1463620022000013983
• Keywords: National identity, National literature, Nationalism, Spain, Galicia
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1022960
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1463620022000013983
• Additional Information: The Version of ; Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 2002 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1463620022000013983