Dissent and Culture in 20th-Century Spai

The course focuses on public and private nature of dissent in twentieth-century Spain in the frame of cultural studies. We will explore different forms of political dissent and attempt to produce a conceptual framework for the definition of dissent as a historically produced--and therefore historically changing--notion. Historical dictatorships, nation-building processes, class and gender conflicts, human rights, poverty, legal rights, freedom of expression and censorship, the workplace, social movements, communal rights, and environmental dispossession will be at the center of our discussion. Several questions will be raised (and hopefully answered) along this journey: How can we engage with dissent as not simply a moment of protest or resistance? How can cultural and aesthetic practices challenge or modify a given social order or way of living/thinking? What is the specificity of Spanish forms of political dissent in the Euro-Atlantic scenario? To address these issues, we will read essays, short stories, graphic novels, as well as theoretical texts that offer varied approaches to history, aesthetics, and politics. The works by writers Federico García Lorca, Ángela Figuera Aymerich, Carmen Martín Gaite; film-makers like Cecilia Bartolomé, Carlos Saura, Helena Lumbreras; or philosophers and historians such as Marina Garcés and Helen Graham, among others, will be some of the materials from which to study the logics and moments of dissent.