Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture (Hispanic Issues, 33, Band 33) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826515649 ISBN 13: 9780826515643

Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Essays in this volume explore the popular cultural effects of rock culture on high literary production in Spain in the 1990s.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christine Henseler is Associate Professor of Spanish at Union College.

Randolph D. Pope is Commonwealth Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia.

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Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture

By Christine Henseler, Randolph D. Pope

Vanderbilt University Press

Copyright © 2007 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8265-1564-3

Contents

Introduction: Generation X and Rock: The Sounds of a New Tradition Christine Henseler and Randolph D. Pope, xi, 
PART I Rocking the Academy: Generation X Narratives, 
1 A Distopian Culture: The Minimalist Paradigm in the Generation X Gonzalo Navajas, 3, 
2 The Pistols Strike Again! On the Functionof Punk in the Peninsular "Generation X" Fiction of Ray Loriga and Benjamín Prado Paul D. Begin, 15, 
3 What We Talk About When We Talk About Dirty Realism in Spain Cintia Santana, 33, 
PART II Can Anyone Rock Like We Do?: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll, Then and Now, 
4 Can Anyone Rock Like We Do? Or, How the Gen X Aesthetic Transcends the Age of the Writer Samuel Amago, 59, 
5 Apocalypses Now: The End of Spanish Literature? Reading Payasos en la lavadora as Critical Parody Luis Martín-Cabrera, 78, 
6 Not Your Father's Rock and Roll: Listening to Transitional/Eighties Writers and Generation X Elizabeth Scarlett, 97, 
PART III Historias del Kronen on the Rocks, 
7 Between Rock and the Rocking Chair: The Epilogue's Resistance in Historias del Kronen Randolph D. Pope, 115, 
8 Realism on the Rocks in the Generational Novel: "Rummies," Rhythm, and Rebellion in Historias del Kronen and The Sun Also Rises Matthew J. Marr, 126, 
PART IV Rocking the Road with Ray Loriga, 
9 Reckless Driving: Speed, Mobility, and Transgression in the Spanish "Rock 'n' Road" Novel Jorge Pérez, 153, 
10 Television and the Power of Image in Caídos del cielo and La pistola de mi hermano by Ray Loriga Kathryn Everly, 170, 
11 Rocking around Ray Loriga's Héroes: Video-Clip Literature and the Televisual Subject Christine Henseler, 184, 
PART V The Soundtrack of Gender: Violating Visions and the Psychological Power of Rock, 
12 Watching, Wanting, and the Gen X Soundtrack of Gabriela Bustelo's Veo Veo Nina Molinaro, 203, 
13 Saved by Art: Entrapment and Freedom in Icíar Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos Linda Gould Levine, 216, 
Afterword: The Moment X in Spanish Narrative (and Beyond) Luis Martín-Estudillo, 235, 
Contributors, 247, 
Index, 251, 

CHAPTER 1

A Distopian Culture: The Minimalist Paradigm in the Generation X

Gonzalo Navajas

The Humanist Framework

In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre published a controversial and highly influential work, L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), in which he provides a comprehensive foundation to his philosophical program, which is based on the rejection of universal axiological principles. In the book, he attempts to link his program to the humanist project that has been a central focus of modern thought from Goethe and Voltaire to the present. Sartre does not pretend to restore and save the classical tradition of thought, but he, nonetheless, establishes a connection between the nihilism and solipsism of his philosophy and the history of humanism, which, at least theoretically, posits a common and solidary destiny for all humanity. Without renouncing his negative critical methodology, Sartre inserts his philosophy within the modern paradigm in which the humanist ideal supplies the central justification.

From this perspective, Antoine Roquentin, Sartre's nihilist figure of La nausée (Nausea), would ultimately propose a renovated and more genuine view of the human condition. His critical examination of the philosophical tradition takes on an extraordinary dimension since, after assuming the burden of a past that he considers false and illegitimate, he undertakes the task of exploring new venues that would be exempt from prior metaphysical presuppositions. He thus claims to uncover a freer form of humanism that potentially can provide a more valid path for a self that, in a Nietzschean manner, has overcome the restrictions of the past. For Roquentin, the old version of humanism is dead, but he can still act according to a new version of humanism in which the only framework of reference is absolute freedom without limits: "l'homme, sans aucun appui et sans aucun secours, est condamné à chaque instant à inventer l'homme" (L'existentialisme 38) (Man, without any support and without any assistance, is doomed to invent man at every moment). More than fifty years later, this radical proposal still resonates actively in the foremost critical movements of the end of the twentieth century that derive from the negative hermeneutics of the Sartrian model: deconstruction and postmodernity. In them, negation is an initial phase that eventually leads to the exploration of new forms of ethical and axiological assertion. Thus, these developments make apparent that the humanist horizon, albeit reconfigured and redefined, cannot be excluded from the contemporary philosophical and aesthetic debate.

The Sartrian parallel is useful to frame conceptually significant segments of the current contemporary cultural condition. In particular, it provides a suggestive methodological tool for the analysis of the works of the authors of the so-called Spanish Generation X that produce their works in the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new century. For these authors, the Sartrian dichotomy between old and new humanism is irrelevant. That opposition implies a dialectical exchange between past and present cultural paradigms in which one is bound to prevail over the other. However, for these authors, one component of the dialectical opposition is missing and thus the confrontation cannot take place. As the narrator of Angel Mañas's Ciudad rayada, Carlos, asserts, those who remain concerned with the cultural tradition are "fossils" that lack the conceptual and vital instruments to understand the current cultural situation and adapt creatively to it. Roquentin rejected the conventional humanist project because it relied on values that had become a subterfuge used to mask a strategy of ideological domination, but his rejection was the consequence of a rigorous examination of the cultural tradition. On the other hand, for the narrator of Mañas' novel, that humanist enterprise is not even worthy of consideration since he has never been exposed to it and he lacks the motivation to know it: "A veces, cuando me encuentro con alguno [humanista], tengo la impresión de que vivimos en planetas diferentes, como si nunca hubieran sido como yo ... Siempre he pensado que los fósiles son unos hijosdelagrandísimaputa" (Ciudad rayada 145) (Sometimes, when I run into one of them [humanists], I have the impression that we live in different planets, as if they had never been like me ... I have always thought that those fossils are real big sons of bitches).

In the narrator's language, the "fossils" are attached to a cultural paradigm that is obsolete and does not deserve his attention. Roquentin communicated actively with the icons of the humanist tradition and, at least partially, he could appropriate portions of their work and thought in order to transform them and modify them according to his own conceptual proposals. The cultural unconscious of Roquentin—who in this case functions as Sartre's alter ego—is nourished by a vast repertoire of texts that include, among others, the works of Hegel, Marx, Bergson, and Husserl as well as Flaubert...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826515649
• ISBN 13: 9780826515643
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 290
• Herausgeber: Henseler Christine
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland