This paper seeks to explain why the Civil War and the post-war period are dominant themes in the Spanish novels published in the 90s. Those of Enriqueta Antolin are not unique, for the theme of the post-war appears regularly in the works of both men and women authors. The paper draws on historians and analyzes a short story and four novels of Antolin to reveal her literary art and find an historical explanation for the persistent obsession with this theme.
With Spain's political changes, including the enfranchisement of women, in the late 1970s, and feminist theories that challenged stereotypical views of motherhood, Spanish women writers began to create more varied depictions. This essay briefly discusses the work of Montserrat Roig, Esther Tusquets, Ana Maria Moix, Nuria Amat, and Maria Mercè Roca, but its focus is on two writers' inscription of motherhood in terms of autonomy and mutual dependency: Carmen Martín Gaite's creation of maternal 'interlocutors,' and Soledad Puértolas's memoir, Con mi madre (2001) in which she writes with extraordinary honesty of the closeness and the silences she shared with her mother.
The present study is an exploration of revisionist mythmaking in Concha Méndez's Surtidor: poesías (1928), specifically of the Generation of 27 poet's appropriation and inscription of the androcentric myth of the siren/mermaid into female discourse, as seen through three poems: "Nadadora," "Natación," and "Bar". Through an analysis of these poems I show that Méndez dismantles the conventional "sirena" figure and revises her to suit a modern woman. In her appropriation of the "sirena," Méndez replaces the antiquated siren/ mermaid of masculine hegemonic discourse with an athletic, capable, and liberated water woman who decides her own destiny. In presenting a woman who frees herself from the restrictions of male subjectivity, Concha Méndez proposes an alternative model for female iconography—a siren singing a song rarely listened to, a song of feminine freedom and self-determination that would set the poet apart from her contemporaries for many years.
Josefina Aldecoa intertwines history, collective memory and individual testimony in her historical memory trilogy: Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro and La fuerza del destino. In the series, Gabriela and her daughter Juana navigate through the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish postwar and exile, and Spain after the death of Franco. Through the central theme of education, Aldecoa is able to express her own personal experiences of contemporary Spain alongside a generation's collective experiences. In this way, individual testimony and collective memory are fused through representations of education in Aldecoa's trilogy.
Contemporary Spanish literature abounds in narratives where silence has an important function. In the fiction of Cristina Fernández Cubas it has epistemological implications. Mercè Rodoreda and Maria Barbal employ a rhetoric of silence to call attention to the situation of women who are obliged to remain silent and suffer without protest. Carme Riera and Dulce Chacón utilize silences, and acts of breaking silence, to emphasize the lack of voice of marginal beings and to highlight sexual, socioeconomic and political inequalities. In the present paper, I focus on the role of silence in a novel by Barbal and a story by Riera.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Gender Issues, and Human Rights
Anna Maria Martínez-Sagi is a largely forgotten but immensely evocative voice in the liberal-progressive press of nineteen-thirties' Spain. In particular, she is remarkable for being one of very few female writers of the time who were also active sportswomen, as well as being fiercely Catalanist and pro-women, in an inclusive sense. This article looks at her contribution to the debate on physical culture in Catalonia at the time, with reference to other writers concerned with the subject, and aims to capture in some small way the energy and humour which characterized her columns and reports.
Islamism, terrorism, reform: the triangle formed by these three concepts and the complex and changeable realities to which they refer is at the centre of political debate in and about North Africa today. The role of Egyptian elements in the leadership of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation is well-known, if not necessarily well understood. The involvement of Maghrebis in terrorist networks in Europe -- whether linked to al-Qaeda or not -- has recently been underlined by the suspected involvement of Moroccans in the 11 March 2004 attack in Madrid. Egypt itself has endured years of terrorist violence; few if any countries have suffered as much from terrorism as Algeria has over the last twelve years; and the bombings in Casablanca on 16 May 2003 suggest that Morocco is not immune.
Topic:
Democratization, Politics, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Algeria, North Africa, Egypt, and Morocco
This briefing compares the mandate of the Independent Monitoring Commission for Northern Ireland (IMC) with those of two recent European examples of the monitoring and enforcement of compliance with peace agreements: the unsuccessful Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) of 1998-1999, and the much more fruitful mission of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995. It attempts to identify lessons from those earlier experiences that may help the IMC carry out its mission in the context of carrying forward the Good Friday peace process.
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North Ireland
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The last big wave of European and Japanese concern about a weak dollar came after the August 1971 breakdown of the Bretton Woods System of fixed exchange rates. At that time European countries feared inflation and, not wanting to support the dollar and thereby import U.S. inflation pressures, they accepted revaluation of their currencies with some misgivings because, as always, a weaker dollar meant more difficulty in competing with vigorous U.S. traded-goods companies.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
The Iran nuclear issue will be on the international agenda in the coming months. The often-postponed visit to Tehran by the head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency (Minatom) Alexander Rumyantsev to sign an agreement on the delivery of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr power plant is now set for January. Meanwhile, early January will see the second round of negotiations between the Europeans and Iran, which is insisting it will end its voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment unless there is significant progress within the three-month timeframe set in the November 15 Paris Accords. That is no easy matter, given that in response to Iran's demands that the negotiations cover a wide range of security and economic issues, the initial European position evidently was to raise the full set of concerns which led to suspension of EU-Iran talks about a Trade Cooperation Agreement, namely, terrorism (such as al-Qaeda), Middle East peace, human rights, and all of Iran's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and Arab Countries