According to Jacques Rancière art, like politics, is not by nature consensual, but rather “dissensual.” This is because of art's capacity to create not only identifications that are different from those which are given to us, but also identifications that at one point are believed to be unviable.
This seminar will take that premise as point of departure to examine how literary works of the modern and contemporary period in Spain have articulated and disrupted notions of place, belonging and departure, at the level of the individual and the collective. We will study texts that explore what can be called “the scene of disagreement”: what happens when subjects refuse to know their place; or when they stray from themselves, and their imagination enables a recalcitrance that, “when pursued systematically, enters the subject into insurrection” (Tanke). Those insurrections affect bodies, minds and also communities and are therefore, inevitably, political.
Primary texts studied will include: La esfinge maragata (Concha Espina), De algún tiempo a esta parte (Max Aub),Tiempo de silencio (Martin Santos), El funeral de Lolita (Luna Miguel), Lectura fácil (Cristina Morales), Un corazón demasiado grande (Eider Rodríguez).
Theoretical texts will include: The Politics of Literature (Jacques Rancière), The Dialogic Imagination (Bakhtin), Enigmas of Identity (P. Brooks), Antinomies of Realism (Jameson), States of Fantasy (Jaqueline Rose).
Prof. L. Elena Delgado (ldelgado@illinois.edu).
W 3:00-6:00 p.m. 1118 FLB