La imaginación desmadrada de Juan José Millás: humor y melancolía en La soledad era esto
This essay explores Juan José Millás's novel La soledad era esto (1990) as means of interrogating current appropriations of disenchantment and melancholy in discussions of contemporary Spanish culture and society. Through a detailed analysis of this novel as well as theoretical studies of affect, this essay aims to achieve three goals. First, to analyze how psychological and ideological processes of melancholy are transformed in Millás's text into a sort of autobiographical simulacrum that deliberately blends fiction and autobiography, thus laying the groundwork for a possible challenge to the tendency to reduce literary works to mere historical documents, and the creativity of writers to psychological diagnoses. Second, to reformulate the medical and political conception of melancholy in an aesthetic conception that locates a strange form of knowledge in black humor—understood both as melancholia in the Hippocratic tradition and as a comedy of despair. Finally, to examine how this reformulation of melancholy in humorous terms interrogates cultural critiques of "desencanto," insofar as such interpretations may themselves be self-referential and disenchanted—while melancholy may work as a model for hope.
Máscaras y simulacros : nuevas políticas del sujeto y la narración
El trabajo se enfoca en la produccion de tres autores, el uruguayo Mario Levrero (La novela luminosa, 2005), el puertorriqueno Eduardo Lalo (Paises invisibles, 2008) y el cubano Leonardo Padura (El hombre que amaba los perros, 2009). Estos textos no solo comparten la cercania temporal sino que coinciden en parecer “inclasificables” por su imprecisa condicion generica y por un uso de la voz narrativa igualmente complejo y ambiguo. Se analizan las estrategias de “autoficcion”, es decir las formas que adquieren las representaciones del yo (que tambien han sido llamadas “ficciones de autor” o “simulacros autobiograficos”) y de las emociones en tres relatos bien distintos. Los dos primeros, centrados en el registro minucioso de lo trivial e insignificante del mundo cotidiano, no se plantean abiertamente como una narrativa politica, por el contrario, en ellos parecen primar las preocupaciones esteticas. A su vez, la novela de Padura se presenta como un claro texto politico, incluso biografico-historico. Sin embargo, todos parecen dejar constancia de la desilusion y desencanto que ha producido la perdida de las utopias sociales y politicas del siglo XX.
The Spanish Socialist Party: A History of Factionalism
Part 1 The early years (1879-1939): from Guesdism to gradualism the pattern of party development tendencies in the PSOE. Part 2 Spectators of history - the exiles: socialist reorganization and persisting disunity relations with other forces the battle for recognition Atlantic drift shadows of tendencies. Part 3 Men without names - the PSOE in Spain, 1939-1970: "The Socialist family" strategic unity, tactical disunity the quasi-clandestine organization the geography of socialism. Part 4 Renovation: Antonio Amat and the reassertion of the interior phase one - the youth renovation phase two - the UGT phase three - the PSOE schism of 1972 a new leadership emerges. Part 5 Socialism in transition 1974-1982: steering to the right behind the "second renovation" clans, currents, and tendencies on the eve of office. Part 6 Epilogue: in government, 1982-1986. Appendices: A - development of the main PSOE sectors in exile, 1939-1972 B - the balance of forces between the main factions at PSOE congresses in exile, 1947-1952 C - socialist executives in the interior D - pseudonyms E - socialist organizational structures, 1944-1986 F - the Socialists and elections, 1977-1986 G - the PSOE in parliament, 1977-1986.