Olver, Thomas
(2023)
Moving Past Patria: Locating Memory in Contemporary Basque Literature.
PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.
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Abstract
Whilst ETA’s definitive cessation of armed activity in 2011 marked the end of over half a century of violent conflict between the Basque separatist group and the Spanish state, a highly politicised dispute over historical memory has since arisen in the public arena. Commonly known as la batalla del relato (“the battle of the narrative”), these fractious debates over the causes and nature of the conflict have frequently constituted a zero-sum struggle to impose an overarching historical narrative. Alongside successive Spanish governments and the mainstream national media, both of which have strenuously promoted a dehistoricised, Manichean interpretation of the conflict, an array of cultural depictions have emerged over the last decade that have simultaneously perpetuated such a narrative. After establishing this context as the starting point for this thesis, I offer a critical examination of the reception of one such work - Fernando Aramburu’s best-selling novel Patria. It outlines the extent to which Patria has been cynically co-opted by the Spanish political and media establishment who, in heralding the novel as a totalising and objective account of ETA’s violence, have sought to bolster the hegemonic state-aligned narrative on the Basque conflict. Thereafter, the central chapters of this thesis explore five separate novels written by female Basque authors during the post-conflict period. Focusing on the representation of location in these works, my analysis draws on feminist epistemology and feminist theories of place derived primarily from human geography to examine the ways in which these novels problematise stable perceptions of place, deploying this as a means of equally subverting static and unreflective articulations of memory, particularly in relation to the conflict period. In carrying out this analysis, this thesis seeks to demonstrate the extent to which these authors resist the antagonistic approach to memory that has become synonymous with la batalla del relato. It contends that their novels instead pursue an agonistic attitude towards remembering the past that is grounded in a more productive conceptualisation of memory as a reflexive, multiperspectival and non-Manichean process. By making this case, this thesis emphasises the potential status of these works as an effective counterpoint to the totalising pretensions of Aramburu’s novel, as well as to the conflictual perspectives towards historical memory that have shaped public discourse on the Basque conflict within Spain.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Aug 2023 15:58 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Aug 2023 15:59 |
| DOI: | 10.17638/03170855 |
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| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3170855 |
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