Oh, History. Jockeying to find a space from which to talk about you.

How can one speak of history if there is no such thing? That is, if we understand history as constituted by multiple discourses produced about the past –and through these discourses, any narrative or enunciation regarding the past is always a product of perceptions, of judgments both collective and subjective, bound by prior and current authorities of influence, institutional knowledge and its methods, its discursive limitations and possibilities, and the temporal and spatial specificity from which one speaks, among other factors that make each enunciation unique, thereby silently speaking through it—then how can one position a beginning within the mess, while sensing that we are already in medias res? From where and when do we speak, knowing full well that, once finished, our speech will always be incomplete? Locating such a strategic origin from which to speak about the past would prove undoubtedly bound to similarly complex conditions that mould one’s discursive practice about history, and that risk failing logical coherency by the time we are done speaking about it. Though these are not necessarily negative consequences for positioning our beginning, let us restate the question: how can one speak of history if there is no such object of study that shows itself, except in false totality, as a straw-man of discursive practices aimed at describing the past, questioning its accidents and occurrences, the force of its change, its inconstant ruptures, its discontinuities, its shadowed patterns of similarity dispersed across time?

This problem is immediately troubling, though perhaps liberating, on at least two accounts. Firstly, the conditions and circumstances mentioned above that speak through a discourse produced on history – although only partially evident to the one who speaks about it, and to a greater or lesser degree attributable to influences contingent upon the site of complex forces acting through the speaking subject— can never be perceived in absolute form. That is, from the conditions that bind any discursive practice to its circumstance, we may take comfort and caution in awareness that we too are undoubtedly subject to a realm of possibilities and influences beyond our conscious register. Yet, when considering what lies exterior to one person’s contribution to this discourse, beyond one speaking subject who chooses history as his or her “object,” the immediacy of this interconnectedness between the speaking subject and his or her context becomes prevalent; this leads me to a second, more pressing matter. Because the events of the past are not fictitious, but did indeed happen —despite the possibility that historical accounts are bound to similar discursive conditions as narrative fiction, making history readable, perhaps to some, like a strange genre of objective literature— there remains a gamut of ethical considerations in assuming all history is literature, or perhaps even fiction. For while history is weighted with the gravity of past events –in the extreme case, we need to look no further back in time than twentieth-century history, its wars and armed conflicts, its mass death and regimes of oppression, to be reminded of the present circumstance— any regard for history as an inexistent object of study should not dismiss the very real, and often traumatic, consequences it has produced in collective and subjective experience. If we choose to conceive of history as an inexistent object —one that has produced a vast field of discourse attempting to make sense of it— consisting of events that have produced and continue to produce horrors, pleasures, and a range of very real affects known to human experience, we risk conflating the past with a fiction that unfolds out of pure determined force, like the plot of a story whose ending is already known to us. What’s at stake, aside from the grave pitfall of believing that history follows any sort of determined course or progress, is the willful surrender of one’s own recognition as being subject to history, provided with the possibility of beginning speaking about it, yet stripped of a partial consciousness that we too are conditioned by its very interstices.

Learning Lessons from Giuliani

As we approach May 27th, Election Day for city halls and the autonomous communities in Spain, the campaign strategies of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) have me wondering if Madrid can learn some lessons from New York. With the PP having once more nominated its incumbents for reelection, Esperanza Aguirre, for the Community of Madrid, and Alberto Ruiz Gallardón for City Mayor, the two candidates promise continued service to Madrid through beautification of Madrid's landscape, its surrounding communities, and continued economic growth. But amidst the daily spectacles of ribbon cutting, photo ops, and inaugurations, what is lost in the awe of novel urban installations are the social issues facing Madrid: rising housing costs in post-euro Spain, and with it, a redrawing of socioeconomic boundaries that segregate the capital city between those who can afford housing in the center, and those who must move to the suburbs and the city's lower-income neighborhoods. Gentrification in Madrid is not only a matter of class difference, but is increasingly becoming rife with racial tensions. With a significant leap in immigrant population (nearly 30% of the city's population is no longer "Spanish" for a country that, two decades ago, was strikingly homogeneous), Madrid's demographic boundaries are rapidly becoming ghettoized, while Aguirre and Gallardón have turned a blind eye to the problem. Suburban violence against immigrants -like this winter's Alcorcón incident, when gangs of Spanish teenagers armed with kitchen knives rallied to "defend" their neighborhood against the "invasion" of "thieving" immigrants- has received more media attention, but these incidents have only been treated as such -- as "incidents," dispersed by police intervention, and unmet with discussion, either in the community or by government, regarding the matter.

Nevertheless, the years of governance under Aguirre and Gallardón -one might even call it their only consistent "policy"- have provided a spectacular new capital city to live in.
The massive demolition and reconstruction of M-30, Madrid's southern highway, -a project that drew significant protests from residents, the ire of commuters, and a call for investigation into its hastened construction and environmental damage- will undoubtedly make the southern area of the city more attractive, once fully completed. Europe's tallest skyscrapers -not one, but four- have already begun to draw attention to Madrid, reasserting its status as one of the most important banking and commercial capitals in Europe. (The four pharaonic peaks, seen from anywhere in the northern part of the city, serve as a reminder that excessive displays of grandeur tend to incriminate the motives for overcompensation.)

The bid for the Olympics was lost to London in the last round of considerations two years ago, but this has not stopped Gallardón and Aguirre from vying for the next Olympic bid and developing new designs for the Olympic Villa, which now has its own (recently inaugurated) metro stop. Countless new metro stations, and renovations of existing ones, have been inaugurated in time for May 27th, making Madrid seem like a much larger and communicable city than when I first knew it, eight years ago. In the past two months, Aguirre's office has published six press releases for her attendance at different inaugurations for metro lines, continued renovations and new stations, while her campaign ads will remind you of the same. In response to the complaints of Madrid residents regarding Gallardón's incessant construction efforts, the Community of Madrid has run a flashy public service announcement, not coincidentally in time for the campaign: "¿Qué pasaría si nunca pasara nada?" "What would happen if nothing ever happened?" The recent spectacles of inauguration ceremonies and monuments in Madrid have indeed subsumed the political scope of the electoral campaign. Novelty and awe have earned their place in the politics of smoke and mirrors, thereby supplanting any real social issues that face a rapidly changing city.

I'm left to wonder if Giuliani's project to "clean up" New York in the 1990s, with its face lift that made a grungy city more palatable to tourism and investors, might provide some lessons for Madrid. After all, incessant ribbon cutting ceremonies -while their monuments and installations do leave Madrid a more eye-catching city to live in- cannot suffice for the long-term damage incurred by pushing the city's problems out of sight, to its marginal neighborhoods.

Street Violence and Police Brutality, Malasaña on May 2nd

Here's a short stream of images seen in Madrid's Malasaña neighborhood on May 1st and 2nd.

And Spanish news coverage from national TV networks on the violent confrontations between civilians and the police.


Today, El País ran an article explaining that, according to City Hall regulation of Madrid festivals in public spaces, the May 2nd celebration was indeed legal, despite Mayor Gallardón having called for riot control police to disperse the crowds by blockading the Plaza Dos de Mayo. Nevertheless, it was this blockade that incited violence. What has not received sufficient attention, however, is the brutal force used by police to remove those occupying the Plaza Dos de Mayo: rubber bullets, an unprecedented mobilization of police force in Madrid, riot gear and, in these images, battery of defenseless civilians subdued by batons and kicks to the head and torso. Some of the rubber bullets were collected from the scene, on which police had written messages to civilians: "Oops! Sorry!"

Gallardón's office continues to decline comment.

Strange Afternoon

The conservative Partido Popular (PP) held a mass demonstration today in Madrid, busing in tens of thousands of participants from across Spain. In theory, the protest was convened in response to the socialist government's unpopular decision to release an ETA terrorist, De Juana, who was on the verge of dying from a hunger strike. The PP's leader, Mariano Rajoy, in a boldly overstated assessment of the event, called it, "the most important demonstration for democracy in recent history." However, in practice, there is a much simpler reason for the growing attendance of protesters who, over the past few years, have come to Madrid. It's a low cost trip to Spain's capital city. Without diminishing the political cause that, in reality, does motivate families from Cuenca and Valladolid to convene in Madrid against the socialist government, I believe it should not go unnoticed that the local Partido Popular chapters organize these weekend trips to Madrid, at reduced group rates, for their party's demonstrations. To draw a similar comparison, if the Republican Party in the US were to bus tens of thousands of participants to New York once a month--which is then displayed to the media as an impressive showing of the party's popular support--why wouldn't your middle-American housewife and her bridge club sign up to go? I do not mean to deny the fact that fervent party supporters are indeed in attendance at these "protests"--nor do I wish to downplay the importance of the crowd's symbolic role and active power at a gathering like this one. Rather, what strikes me as odd is the false assumption that "seeing" large numbers in a crowd (particularly when reported second-hand, via news media) is directly related to the number of constituents who support the political agenda being rallied around. It's as if granting "visibility" to the sheer numbers in attendance equates--and collapses--these numbers into a solid base of popular support.

The news media report that those in attendance are, by and large, many of the same people who protested three weekends ago against the government's negotiation with the terrorist organization ETA to arrive at a delicate and now foiled, permanent ceasefire. Perhaps by modest conjecture, we could assume that these are also many of the same families who came to Madrid almost three years ago to protest the legalization of gay marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples, a march that was thinly-veiled as "pro-family" and "in defense of our families." These are the same demonstrations that, the socialist government has rightly complained, draw "pre-constitutional" (i.e., fascist and Francoist) banners, symbols and anthems, including Falange members and neo-nazi youth groups chanting the fascist slogan, "One Spain, Grand and Free." (On a side note, busing party supporters to Madrid for massive demonstrations is a practice that originated under dictatorship; the Franco Regime required a visual display of "supporters" congregated in the Plaza del Oriente below the Royal Palace balcony, from where the dictator would read his speeches, forming part of the regime's legitimizing myth. Even conservative Spanish politician Luis Guillermo Perinat commented in his autobiography Recuerdos de una vida itinerante that these buses brought "people who came [to the capital city] delighted to spend a few days of paid vacation in Madrid.")

And now that the protest is over, thousands of people have flooded the streets of Chueca, the gay district, and downtown Madrid, making for a spectacle of Spanish tourists gawking at the rainbow banners and skyscrapers, while they carry their Spanish flags proudly. Fuencarral, a street famous for its hip, designer stores and punky flare, is overrun with fur coats and baby strollers dressed in red and yellow ribbons. Near the pink-neon parking lot entrance, the one that bears a sculpture in the form of a red AIDS ribbon, the surrounding planters are smattered with posters that say "Not in my name!" and "Zapatero, if you had two balls you'd call for another election!" In sum, it has been a strange afternoon.

Tax Breaks for Human Rights Violations

Filing this season's taxes, I came across this gem in the "Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad" (Internal Revenue Service Publication 54, p. 15):

"If you are present in a foreign country in violation of U.S. law, you will not be treated as a bona fide resident of a foreign country or as physically present in a foreign country while you are in violation of the law. Income that you earn from sources within such a country for services performed during a period of violation does not qualify as foreign earned income. [...] For 2006, the only country to which travel restrictions applied was Cuba. The restrictions applied for the entire year. However, individuals working at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are not in violation of U.S. law. Personal service income earned by individuals at the base is eligible for the foreign earned income exclusion provided the other requirements are met."

Disgusting, yes. But, this isn't so surprising after all, is it?

Lilliputia, Coney Island's Midget Community

In his book Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas asserts that in the early 1900s Coney Island became a space invested with creative experimentation: both in architectural design and for new uses for modern technology. This is not really a provocative statement, considering Coney Island has been and continues to provide artificial spectacles (to a certain degree, even the beaches are fake) for its countless numbers of visitors to enjoy. But about a century ago, the theme parks cropping up along this stretch of land just outside Manhattan were at the horizon of spectacularity and innovation. Coney Island's beaches became so overpopulated during the day, for example, that managers attempted to draw the same crowds at night, by illuminating the beach front with electric lights. Or, the roller coaster that thrilled its riders with a 'safe' sense of death, in the free-fall of electric cars guided by railway tracks. According to Koolhaas, in Coney Island these new building designs and technological uses would become employed without any 'real' function: after all, the theme park is a simulation and does not, for instance, resemble everyday Manhattan. In this light, within the first few years of the early 1900s, Coney Island would become, rather accidentally, Manhattan's other space of condensed extremes, of simulated experiments, of modern excesses. In sum, Manhattan's own carnivalesque, fun-house mirror.

Below I have an excerpt from Koolhaas' essay on Dreamland, a massive theme park complex, complete with a fully operative midget community, a big-top circus, roller coasters and freak shows unseen before by visiting audiences. Former Republican state senator William H. Reynolds, real-estate promoter and president of Dreamland, purchased his stretch of land in 1904 to build a theme park that would top Coney Island's already overcrowded attractions of mass entertainment, the final product being Dreamland, a predecessor to Walt Disney's own (now cryogenically frozen) imagination. Here is Koolhaas' account of the rise & fall of Lilliputia, Dreamland's own midget community:

"Lilliputia, the Midget City: if Dreamland is a laboratory for Manhattan, Midget City is a laboratory for Dreamland. Three hundred midgets who had been scattered across the continent as attractions at World's Fairs are offered a permanent experimental community here, 'a bit of old Nuremburg in the fifteenth century.'

Since the scale of Midget City is half the scale of the real world, the cost of building this cardboard utopia is, at least theoretically, quartered, so that extravagant architectural effects can be tested cheaply. The midgets of Dreamland have their own parliament, their own beach complete with midget lifeguard and 'a miniature Midget City Fire Department responding [every hour] to a false alarm' -effective reminder of man's existential futility.

But the true spectacle of Midget City is social experimentation. With the walls of the midget capital, the laws of conventional morality are systematically ignored, a fact advertised to attract visitors. Promiscuity, homosexuality, nymphomania and so on are encouraged and flaunted: marriages collapse almost as soon as they are celebrated; 80 percent of newborn babies are illegitimate. To increase the frisson induced by this organized anarchy, the midgets are showered with aristocratic titles, highlighting the gap between implied and actual behavior.

Midget City represents Reynolds' institutionalization of misbehavior, a continuing vicarious experience for a society preparing to shed the remnants of Victorianism.

In May 1911 the lighting system in the devils that decorate the facade of Dreamland's End of the World short-circuits. Sparks start a fire that is fanned by a strong sea wind.

Only weeks before a superior fire-fighting apparatus has been installed; the ground has been dug up once more, to add new water mains and hydrants. But somehow the new ducts have not been connected with the Atlantic, inexhaustible fire extinguisher. In shock, the fire fighters of Fighting the Flames [another Coney Island attraction] are first to desert their dormitories and the confines of Dreamland.

As real fire fighters arrive on the scene, they find no more pressure in the system than 'a garden hose.'

Fireboats are kept at a distance by the heat. Only Lilliputia's midget fire fighters -confronted with the real thing after +/- 2,500 false alarms- put up a real fight against the holocaust; they save a small piece of their Nuremburg -the fire station- but otherwise their actions are hopeless. The most pathetic victims of the disaster are the 'educated' animals that now become victims of their unlearning instinct; waiting for their teachers' permission, they escape too late, if at all. Elephants, hippos, horses, gorillas run amok, 'enveloped in flames.' Lions roam the streets in murderous panic, finally free to kill each other on their way to safety: 'Sultan...roared along Surf Avenue, eyes bloodshot, flanks torn and bleeding, mane afire...' For many years after the holocaust, surviving animals are sighted on Coney, deep in Brooklyn even, still performing their former tricks...

In three hours Dreamland burns to the ground."

The Legend of Ramón del Valle-Inclán

At a literary tertulia held at the Café de la Montaña in 1899, Valle-Inclán got into a brawl that led to the amputation of his left arm. The conversation started simply enough, but quickly deteriorated to a violent confrontation: who was to blame for yesterday's fistfight between a Portuguese artist and a young Andalusian aristocrat in one of downtown Madrid's ritziest neighborhoods, the Castellana? Legend has it that Valle-Inclán chose to pontificate the value of honor to his audience, while Manuel Bueno -who knew more about the Castellana incident- contradicted Valle's bold assertions. Valle then insulted Bueno, who lifted his cane in the air, while Valle grabbed a glass bottle the neck and launched at Bueno. To defend himself against his aggressor, Bueno delivered Valle a sharp blow with his cane, lodging the hooks from Valle's shirt sleeve deep into the flesh. After two days of treating the wound, Valle's left arm showed signs of gangrene and required amputation. Apparently, during the surgery, Valle distracted himself with a Cuban cigar while blowing plumes of smoke towards the ceiling of the operating room.

Another anecdote from the author's mythology is the unfortunate gunshot wound Valle suffered to his foot, in 1901. During a storm-beaten trip on horseback through la Mancha, Valle had difficulty managing his horse, spooked by the combination of torrential rain and intervals of thunder. In an instant Valle made a quick jerk, so as not to fall off his saddle, which accidentally set off his pistol, shooting himself in the foot. The Baroja brothers, accompanying Valle on the journey, took him to the nearest train station and sent the wounded and screaming Valle back to Madrid for medical attention.

To lesson the pain of his chronic ulcers, Valle maintained a strict diet -not to mention, a curious therapy- for long periods of time: water, milk, eggs and red-wine enemas. He ate little, was an avid hash smoker, experimented with cocaine and opium, and would later write about these halucinatory experiences in his literary works. His explosive personality and sarcastic sense of humor made for gruff encounters with journalists, which along with his signature lisp, cultivated the eccentric myth of a man that the Spanish press both lauded and despised. Here are some excerpts from the 1920s Spanish newspapers that contribute to the legend of Ramón del Valle-Inclán.

In 1927, Valle-Inclán stood trial for provoking an 'incident' in the Foltalba Theatre on the opening night of Son of the Devil, a play written by Valle's nemesis, Joaquín Montaner. As secretary of the Organizing Committee for the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, Montaner chose not to invite Valle-Inclán to present his work at the festival, passing him up for several lesser-known playwrights. According to news reports, at the end of Montaner's play Valle repeatedly shouted «¡Muy mal!», as the police chief who happened to be in the audience attempted to usher him out. Valle-Inclán refused and was arrested, exclaiming his now infamous words, «¡Arreste a los que aplauden!» Arrest those who are applauding! Here are some excerpts published from the court proceedings.

The magistrate addresses Valle-Inclán and commands:
"Will the defendant please rise!"
Valle-Inclán, softly stroking his beard with his only hand, responds without moving:
"I'm fine as I am."
Murmurs break out among the crowd and the magistrate, ringing a bell, exclaims:
"Defendant. Stand up! That's an order!"
The defense lawyer intervenes:
"The defendant suffers from acute rheumatism."
"No! No!" Mr. Valle-Inclán interrupts, "No! Lies, no! I'm not a deceitful sissy! I don't have rheumatism. It's just that I don't want to stand up..."

When order is regained, the questioning begins.
"Defendant, do you swear to tell the truth?"
Valle-Inclán, face to face with the magistrate, yells:
"I don't make promises! It's either I testify, or I'll do nothing at all!"
"The law requires the defendant to swear..."
"I don't care! I can't swear on anything. I'm Catholic, and as much Apostolic, Roman, antidyanstic..."
The magistrate of the proceedings rings the bell again.
"Order! Order! That declaration is impertinent..."
"I'm Catholic, by St. James! And it's very pertinent for me to say that, during the war I was director of the Castillian division..."
"Order! Order!"

The interrogation continues.
"What is your name?"
"And yours?"
The audience breaks out into laughter, while the magistrate firmly pounds the table with his bell.
"Defendant!"
"You have to understand," says the smiling defendant, "It's less absurd that I ask you your name, than it is for you to ask me mine." Valle-Inclán gestures to the crowd in attendance.
"All these gentlemen know perfectly well who I am, and yet in your case I'm pretty sure..."
"Order! Order!"

"What's your profession?"
"Coronel General of the Armies."
"That title doesn't exist in the Spanish military!"
"Coronel General of the Armies of Countries in the hot zone..."
"And which countries are those?"
"It's going to be really difficult for me to explain to you. If you had some sense of geography..."
"Order, defendant!"

(Excerpts taken from the newspaper The Herald of Madrid, 28 December 1927.)

*****

"Up there in Galicia, the dead are treated with plain familiarity. Sometimes we even joke with the dead. Funerary processions would go through the streets almost daily, in and out of houses. Almost all the townspeople witness it at one time or another, and most have had conversations with the deceased... In this environment, even as a young child, I was a friend to the dead. I used to sneak out of the house and go to wakes at church, and to graveyard masoleums where bones are stored, to clarify a question that worried me quite a bit at that age: if skulls had hair or not... My greatest desire at the time was to see a corpse."

"As a boy, did you ever have a crush?"
"Yes. I used to fall in love with the ladies who appeared in the illustrated figures of Elegant Fashion and Current Fashion, around the 1870s. They were all blondes and wore bustles in the rear. Studying them, I would dream of the vast salons with polished floors, illuminated by magnificent lamps, where they would dance and play parlor games... The girls I've known would seem good or bad to me, according to their degree of similarity with the blonde women in those drawings."

(Excerpts from The Herald of Madrid, 13 March 1926.)

A Pirate's Guide to National Treasures

Or, How to Access the National Library in Spain. Recently, the Ministry of Culture relaxed its entrance requirements to the make the National Library more accessible to all. Now, anyone with an ID can enter and ask for a book in the main reading room. This is not to say, however, that the new "loosened" security measures make the process any easier for those of us who research materials in the other rooms-- microfilm, documents prior that date before 1930, magazines and newspapers, journal articles, etc. Here's a rundown of my daily routine to get me hands on some of ye olde nationally preserved doubloons... arrrrg...

1. Checkpoint one: Entrance through security metal detectors and a search of your personal belongings. Security will scan your laptop if it has been registered with the library barcode.

2. Checkpoint two: Check your coat and your sense of humor in exchange for a plastic bag for the items you wish to carry with you into the library. This includes pencils, a notebook, a laptop, a wallet. Books or other printed materials that do not belong to the library must be checked at a separate station (take detour), where each item requires its own paperwork and authorization.

3. Checkpoint three: Check your bag and other personal belongings in the locker. Pens, ink, and rubber fists will not pass security.

4. Enter the library: Scan your ID card (to acquire one, you must present a letter of introduction from a research institution and a residence card or passport). Show your transparent plastic baggy to security and say, "hey, I'm not taking anything illegal in here. I left that can of Crisco en my locker."

5. Go to the research room of your choice: The rooms are divided by the kinds of materials they house (books, magazines, maps, sometimes rare materials, etc.) The white labcoats, upon entrance, will assign you a desk with a number. Consult the map to find your assigned desk.

6. Fill out the request forms: You may only ask for three materials at a time in any one room. The card asks for a personal signature, a punch-clock time validation, your ID number, and the serial number of the requested material.

7. Wait for the light on your assigned desk to flash incessantly: This means you finally got a book! Go and retrieve the gold by showing your laminated card with desk number.

8. Repeat as necessary: To complete another request, you must first return one material to the labcoats.

9. Exit: Upon leaving, be prepared for a strip search with white rubber gloves. And a guard who will leaf through your notebook to make sure you haven't "removed" any pages from the books. Scan your laptop again upon exit, and skip freely down the monumental stairs of the National Library, past the towering stone figures of Cervantes and Lope de Vega...

Esperpento!

I've been reading a lot of Valle-Inclán lately, a Galician playwright who coined the term esperpento as a technique to represent the grotesqueness of everyday Spain. This was in the 1920s, and yet somehow it still seems to be relevant today. (But that's fodder for another blog entry; for now, I'll limit myself to Valle-Inclán.) Esperpento, according to Valle, is a critical lens from which to represent the world and thereby expose its deformities, its carnavalesque features, its madness and marginal characters, in an effort to portray (by way of distorition) the very real object it degrades. Example: by portraying the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera as a ship of fools and drunks who came to power by force, under false pretenses, we actually get at Valle's criticism that... well... Primo and his military generals came to power by force, under false pretenses. Here are some gems from the three plays I've been reading, titled under the trilogy Martes de Carnaval (1930). I hope you enjoy! (Photo at left: Valle-Inclán and his four children, strategically placed to hide his amputated left arm that was lost after complications from infection, due to a stab wound from a duel in a bar.)

On common folk:
"General Friolera, feeling warm, takes off his hat and sticks his head out the window, breathing in the gusts of seabreeze. The four hairs on his bald head dance a ridiculous dance. Towards the rear of the dock, a coffin sways above a group of women and young men, destined for a merchant captain who died aboard his ship. Pachequín the Barber, who was called to shave General Friolera's beard, limps behind them, stepping on the corner of his own coat-tails. Don Friolera, upon seeing him, retracts his head back inside. His moustache trembles like a cat when it sneezes."

On the Military:
"Lieutenant Cardona. His laughter makes the mirrors of the balcony tremble, the ash of his cigarette flies above their beards [of his conspirators], his gut inflates in an untamed orgy of jubilation. The coffee cups dance on the tables, the canary jumps in its cage, and the glass eye of Lieutenant Don Lauro Rovirosa falls out once more."

In the Circle of Fine Arts, in Madrid:
"A Simpleton approaches the table, lugubrious, tall, lanky and without color in his face: his affirmative, naked adam's apple cynically gallops up and down with his gait, encrusted in a plunging movement between two points in his neck: the knot of an annoying, loosening ascot pinches his skin down the breast of his shirt with the melancholy of a stoic philosopher: his bald head parted with waves of long hair in patches, his thin hands, his fingers long like an organist, accentuate his anomalous and deformed expression, like that of a musician escaped from an orchestra. His entire figure dilludes the melancholy of a waltz, tarnished by the smoke of the cafés, tumbles on the duván, debts owed to waiters, to interminable discussions."

On the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII:
"The Monarch, popping his head out the window of the royal traincar, brings with him a buffoon-like smile and face that appears like a mask made of lard, his brown eyes roll around, checking out the delegation of women from the Red Cross. He applauds at the end of the speech, uninterested and simple-minded, bringing forth his earthworm-like figure and a voice that sounds like a hollow reed."

The Spanish Multitude in the 1920s

I return to ye olde blog with an idea that is not so original: that the Franco regime (1939-1975) had its origins in, and perhaps learned some of its lessons from, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). For in 1920's Spain, the repressive policies of the ruling elite (composed primarily of Spanish military and pro-monarchy sympathizers) responded to an emerging fear for the destructive potential of the "unruly" masses. The military "State of Exception" under which King Alfonso XIII legitimized Primo de Rivera's rule, instituted censorship as part of the "national solution" to suppress violence of anarchist-led terrorism and, through its unprecedented reforms of economic policy, to institute a rapid modernization of Spain by authoritarian rule. The Franco regime, years later, would take up a similar project, though more recognizably fascist in its ideology of National-Catholicism, and more notably, "conservative" in its implementation of modernizing reforms. Nevertheless, the social conditions that laid the groundwork for the rise of Spanish fascism seem to have their origins in this emergent "newness" of 1920's Spain: the mobilization, organization and instruction of the masses by a State governance that perceived the multitude with fear.

With much of rural Europe suffering economic hardship in the interwar period, industry in urban areas amassed a new proletariat workforce that would become quickly integrated into labor unions. Needless to say, the socialist, communist and anarchist tendencies of these sindicates (the UGT and CNT, for example), compounded with the Bolshevik revolution in recent memory, was a matter of primary concern for the State, in order to ensure the success of Primo's top-down "modernizing" project. For it was Primo de Rivera's view, shared by many of his advisors, that the masses ought to be ordered by instruction and discipline, less they threaten the stability of authoritarian rule. Toward this end, the regime endorsed the Unión Patriótica (UP), a "grass-roots" organization -complemented by a youth group and a womens' chapter (la sección femenina)- that sought to arm and militarize citizens in defense of the unity of the Spanish Nation. Those readers familiar with the history of the Franco regime will recognize the UP as a proto-fascist mobilization of Spanish citizens that would become full-fledged, at its most violent, in defense of the Spanish Nation during the Civil War (1936-1939).

Nevertheless, the Primo regime's desire to militarize Spanish citizens was motivated in part by control, borne out of fear: that this "new" multitude, amassing in urban centers with unprecedented numbers, should subscribe to the belief that the military State constituted –and thereby would redeem— the legitimacy of the Spanish Nation. What interests me here, in the scope of what the 1920s might have "looked like" in fledgling cosmopolitan centers, such as Madrid, is the emerging novelty of the city, its rhythm, its automotive speed, its bustling multitude. For in the amassing of the crowds, and through the Primo regime's attempts to exercize control over the masses, therein may be observed a "new" sense of time that has, as two sides of the same coin, the chaotic, heterogeneous pulse of the city and -in dialectic opposition- the homogeneous condensation of time for the services of the State to organize these crowds.

The monumental, national spectacles endorsed by mandate of the Primo regime -in an effort to demonstrate the unity of the Spanish Nation and the prowess of dictatorial rule- have as one of their residual effects the condensation of time and space for more efficient regulation of the “new” (and urban, proletariat) multitude. I have in mind one example (among many) of this spectacular monumentality at the service of the regime: the sports arena. The expansion of the stadium in the late 1920s was made possible by a rise in popular appeal for sporting events -most notably, soccer- as a "new" form of spectacle, with bullfighting attendances in decline since the 1910s, and with it, the common perception that sport was a leisure activity for the wealthy. But the construction of massive sports arenas and stadiums in the 1920s was due in large part to advances in modern technology. The loudspeaker, now amplified electrically, had a significant impact on the sheer numbers of people who could attend an event in a single, closed arena. (The Campo de Ciudad Lineal in Madrid jumped from a capacity of 8,000 sideline spectators in the late 1910s, to nearly 15,000 in the elevated bleachers of Estadio Chamartín in 1924). The loudspeaker, in this regard, facilitated a collapse of time and space, with a single voice projected across a vast terrain that could accomodate a greater number of people. A tool to instruct the masses, or to inform a crowd of happenings on the field, the sound of the amplified loudspeaker now promised to amass even greater numbers, who could respond to the “real time” voice of an announcer narrating the positions of players on the field, or to the precise movement of a weapon during a military exercise. Political rallies, sports, and mass military spectacles served as the Regime’s condoned spaces of crowd control and, likewise, as the creative loci of an emergent Spanish National narrative, where winnings by sports teams were equivalent with national victories; the homogeneous time of the sports arena became a nascent form of control, when employed to organize the multitude in celebration of Spain's cultural unity.

I should like to end by suggesting that these “new” spectacles not only appealed to popular tastes for their novelty, met by the Primo regime’s aspirations to “pacify” the masses; it seems to me that, generally, the sites of mass culture –-the stadium, the State-sponsored folkloric festival and the military exercize— were to become the condoned spaces wherein the fascist narrative of the Spanish Nation would be developed and written: a space that under the Franco Regime became synonymous with the homogeneous time of the National narratives of fascism, and consistent with the regimes' desire that the national citizenry might adhere to the regulatory processes of modern control and entertainment.

Strangers to Ourselves

Perhaps it is the estrangement from our experience with history—and from ourselves, from our associations and social affiliations, from our governments and communities—that mark the subject’s experience with history as a violent one.

Undoubtedly, the most estranging event (if not feeling) I have experienced came at the most unexpected of moments during a visit to my parent’s house almost three years ago. Upon entering my childhood room I noticed a folder on my desk and, in it, a stack of printed pages—e-mails that my father had received from me while I lived in New York. During that time I began to write a series of e-mails to friends and family, explaining the day-to-day events of life in Manhattan, a routine that began the morning I walked to the end of the street to look up and see two buildings in miniature, ablaze and billowing smoke. Accounts of the city turned military-state, with armed soldiers at checkpoints requiring ID to walk from campus to my apartment. Stories of startled midnight awakenings to the thundering fly-over of patrolling airforce jets. Ghastly narratives of human debris raining in Brooklyn and clouds of smoke blowing uptown with wind gusts, two months after the towers collapsed. Hotdog vendors in face masks and selling American flags. Sirens, panic and the day-to-day banal that trigger alarm or startle one awake at night with the sensation of one's own imminent death. Apocalyptic, yes. But as real as experience can be when faced with phantom pangs of having witnessed sudden death, in masses.

As I thumbed through these pages of memories conveniently far away -memories never entirely forgotten but disregarded and unexpectedly awaiting for me then, that afternoon-, it became apparent that my father had saved all of my e-mail messages in this folder. I read and began to remember some of the details from those days in New York, on September 11th—a young woman laughing hysterically in disgust, a businessman vomiting into a trashcan on the street corner, masses of people, some of them bloodied in ties and dresses painted entirely white with ashes, a young mother asking me if the radio announced news of evacuation while her child cried frantically in a stroller, and the stench of burning wreckage that persisted for weeks afterwards. One remembers the stench: when you inhale smoke and wonder what human vapor enters you, what mixture of toxic chemicals and disintegrated human matter enters your nostrils, how could one forget? As I read these stories the horrors and confusion, the death at your door came back to me. I read on until I came to a page that I could not possibly have written, a paragraph describing the first tower crumble and fall to rubble, seen from my perspective at an intersection with the avenue—an experience I most certainly did witness to write about, but could not remember, no matter how much I imagined.

This moment of estrangement, for one’s own seemingly impossible yet very real experience, came to me as the greatest shock, as a flooding impossibility, sinking and hallowing, of disbelief. Disbelief of oneself, of one's own reality, of an experience so sublime and awful that it could only be real. For when I think of the events of September 11th, I remember, as I only can, not one day that comemmorates the traumatic event of two towers falling to the ground with the several thousand inside, but a fading -yet ever vivid- two years in New York, and the day the impossible remembrance of it came to me as the contents of a void. A void I have evidence to be able to say I experienced, but cannot fully recall.

I doubt that my remembrance will fade for that day when I went into my old bedroom, unsuspectingly, to leaf through pages of a manila folder. My days in New York –what has been described inadequately as a ‘national trauma'- have not left me, nor am I certain that to desire this experience to go away, to recede into time, would be sufficient. Rather, I realize one of the most difficult tasks has been to come to terms —perhaps by my own denial, both desired and involuntary- that what happened in New York during those years has marked much of my relationship with my research interests, because it has left its mark on my own past, my every day, and that thing we understand collectively as an experience, as much as I wish I could conceive of it as known. And this is the paradox. Maybe then, by remembrance, it might begin to recede in time.

Racial Purity: The Enlightened Dream to Colonize Spain

"[General Joaquín Acosta] continued his march [in southern Spain], passing through the German Colony, which was populated in a stretch of land between Córdoba and Écija by King Carlos III, and whose capital is said to be the most beautiful population named Carlota, where the influence of the northern races may be noted." -D. Januario Triana, 1853

With my growing fascination for the Enlightenment in Spain I've come across a bizarre fun fact. In the mid eighteenth century King Carlos III and a select crew of his enlightened advisors took up the project of colonizing Andalucía (yes, the most southern and hottest desert region of the peninsula) with German Catholics. In this stretch of land described by Januario Triana (in his biography of General Joaquín Acosta's travels through southern Spain), a cluster of towns was built from scratch, each with symmetrical quadrants, right-angled streets, an experiment of enlightened ideals in practice, each town named in honor of the royal family.

"La Carlota was founded in 1767 by the interest of King Carlos III to colonize the unpopulated regions of the Guadalquivir River valley and the Sierra Morena. The legal administration to carry out this colonizing project was constituted by the Fuero of New Populations of Andalucía, which established three vast zones for colonization whose seats of government would reside in La Carolina (Jaén), La Carlota (Córdoba) and La Luisiana (Sevilla). The objective of this colonization was twofold: on the one hand, to protect the transportation of goods in these areas (unpopulated after the ethnic cleansing that followed the Castillian invasion of Al-Andalus [several centuries prior]) that served as refuge for bandits and theives, and on the other hand, to put into production and cultivation the vast regions of southern Spain that had until then remained fallow. The project was implemented by two great enlightened thinkers: Campomanes y Pablo de Olavide, who was commissioned to undertake the project of colonization. Juan Gaspar de Thurriegel [a Bavarian immigrant] was designated overseer of the grouping of colonies that inhabited these lands, for which he brought close to six thousand German and Dutch colonizers to Spain, as well as some Catalans and Valencians."

Building a town in a desert means having your very own tabula rasa, an empty space with no history and no hang-ups (except for that ethnic cleansing bit from many centuries ago), a terrain of no memory upon which one may design and construct an enlightened utopia. The French model of rational urban planning employed in the construction of La Carlota may be seen today, with its "streets that cross at perpendicular angles and give way to symmetrical town blocks that extend to both sides of the main throughway." That is, the urban model provided an efficiency for commerce and an ample habitus for upstanding (German) Catholics. In sum, the settlers' presence would police the unruly bandits, increase production and, perhaps implied by this set of moral corrections, rub off an ethical citizenry on the locals. All in all, the Spanish Enlightenment's wet dream.

It was hoped that with these pocket settlments, Spain might serve as a European model for enlightened reform, an importation of northern efficiency in Andalucía. "The towns and cities founded on this new foundation are called New Populations, whose principal objective is to suppress the great territorial inequalities, better take advantage of the land's resources, repopulate desert zones and create a newly reformed, idealist and utopian society that would serve as the model for the rest of Spain and Europe. Thus, King Carlos III, Campomanes and Pablo de Olavide, together with others, made it possible that men from diverse European nations could come and transform fallow lands into living towns." It would seem that the Spanish Enlightened thinkers who took up this project perceived the "German work ethic" and "Catholic morality" as a valuable model for modernization in Spain, an assumption we might recognize today on a sliding scale with dangers such as "ethnic superiority" and its catastrophic consequences for the twentieth century.

Not surprisingly, however, the transplant of German settlers to the Spanish desert failed miserably. The settlers arrived before construction of the towns was completed and, as if the lack of shelter and searing heat weren't enough, they became vulnerable to continued attacks by bandits who set fires to surrounding lands in attempts to regain control of the roads travelling through these regions. Ironically, the Germanic traits that the Enlightened advisors hoped would become instilled in the local culture were foiled in part by the plan's shoddy implementation and, as well, by the hijacking and black market trade of stolen goods.

During his visit to the settlements in 1769, Olavide paints an abject portrait of the unfortunate participants of his enlightened experiment. "I have not, without feeling great pain, been able to see the deplorable state in which I found her [the colony of La Carlota]... Many people live in wooden shacks, without more than a wooden slab for a roof, the residents scolded by the strong heat of Andalucía, evident in that these people suffer greatly in health. For all of this I desired to push forward the schedule of erecting houses this past summer, and it becomes clear that those who do have shelter suffer less, or almost nothing at all. And yet it was impossible to make them [the shelters] all at once since there are not enough hands nor materials, but at least each family lives on its own plot of land making a shed on it, and with the help of his neighbor obligated to this work, but for those who best have conserved their health, each family lives separated with the greatest possible ventilation possible, even in shanties covered with palms and other sticks to better cover the sun. Here they might live with a better toilet facilities, not in the impractical sheds of wooden slats that abound in hundreds, of people turned about, the bigger aside the smaller, the healthy with the sick, exposed to filth, disorder and contagion."

Call it the enlightened dream at its most abject achievement, the concentration camp.

Denial

"One day we will not be able to stop a popular revolution." -Sheik Bashir al Najafi, one of the top four Shiite leaders in Iraq.

There is Civil War in Iraq, and no one wants to see it.

If the number of casualties might begin to shed some light on the growing unrest in Iraq: the Baghdad morgues are reported as full and well beyond their capacity. Around 3,000 Iraqis were murdered in July, many of these bodies found dumped after kidnapping and torture, topping the estimated 25,000 Iraqi civilians who have died this year from the violence of the "civil conflict" category. The estimated death toll this week for US troops reached 2,579 since the occupation began.

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera reports that Shiite and Sunni communities in Iraq -an estimated 160,000 people- have been displaced by continued sectarian violence, kidnappings and murders, with families swapping houses to establish religious ghettos that might protect these communities faced with impotent and, in cases, untrustworthy and corrupt Iraqi police. The religious segregation, it is predicted, will destabilize plans for a peaceful coexistence between Shiites and Sunnis and further agitate the growing violence; this is not to mention the drawing of geographical lines between religious communities that could become the fragmentary boundaries to mark emerging regions as nations with desire for autonomy.

At the end of July the Pentagon decided to extend the tour of 4,000 US troops, relocating them to Baghdad admist growing violence in the capital city, a prolongation that will take the US occupying forces in Iraq from 127,000 to over 130,000 US soldiers by the next rotation expected in the fall.

And while the Bush administration and UN ambassador John Bolton have blocked the international community's attempt at an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebannon, Iraqi "insurgents" are finding it easier to recruit and attack US occupying forces in Iraq.

Iraq Resistance Gains Steam. "'Attacks against US forces have increased, particularly since the Israeli military offensive on Lebanon began,' Anbar police officer Yusuf al-Dailemi told the London-based Al-Quds Press news agency. 'Dozens of attacks are being carried out every day against US troops in the Al-Anbar province, western Iraq.' Dailemi further said in recent days attacks on the Americans forces hit a record high of 50."

Yet there are efforts from US designed and Kurdistan funded propoganda to sell an image of a peaceful Iraq to potential investors. This week "Kurdistan: The Other Iraq" will be launched in TV and print ads, as well as a national tour to promote the "peacful Iraq" that the media apparently has chosen to ignore. "The ad campaign is the brainchild of veteran Republican public relations firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers, last seen in July 2005 doing PR for the 'Truth Tour,' a week-long trip to Iraq by conservative radio talk-show folks," the Washington Post reports. "The idea then, we [at the Washington Post] are told, was 'to report the good news on Operation Iraqi Freedom you're not hearing from the old-line news media . . . including the positive developments and successes they are achieving.'"

Denial? Who said anything about denial?

Power, Symbol

UNICEF and the World Health Organization are asking for a UN negotiated "safe corridor" to deliver medical supplies and water sanitation kits to civilians in Lebanon, a war-free zone that shows little promise of materializing in the weeks to come. Their current estimate stands at half a million displaced persons, and a prediction of that number reaching 800,000 refugees within the next few days. Yet, while the crisis worsens for the growing number of civilians affected by the war -and daily increments in casualties-, the Security Council of the United Nations finds itself with its hands tied, namely because of one man: U.S. Ambassador John Bolton.

Bolton has already exercized the right to veto, striking down a proposed resolution that would condemn the Israeli attacks as a use (and abuse) of "disproportionate force" against Hezbollah and Hamas. While the Security Council awaits this afternoon's briefing by Kofi Annan, and an expected pitch to negotiate a cease-fire and beef up current UN occupying forces, Bolton's position is seemingly aready determined. “Among other things," he says, "I want somebody to address the problem how you get a cease-fire with a terrorist organization.” In response to the French Ambassador's push for such a cease-fire, Bolton retorted before the press, “This is a different kind of situation, and I’m not sure that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking, works in a case like this.” I suppose "Old Europe" does have a conventional way of thinking, first by not finding substantive cause to wage war in Iraq, and now positing the idea that peace might involve diplomacy.

Clearly, Bolton is buying time. The U.S. position on the conflict has become evident in the past week as a stall tactic, a waiting game until "Condi" Rice visits the region. This was made public, rather accidentally, when President Bush and Tony Blair were overheard on a live microphone last week at the G-8 summit, when Bush, chewing on a baked good, uttered his now infamous opinion that "We've gotta git Syria to git Hezbollah to stop doing this shit," and then seconds later announced his intention to send "Condi" to the region maybe as soon as this weekend.

Blair, before he recognized the mic was on, doubted the effectiveness of this plan, suggesting that any appearance of the U.S. -as a sole actor- could polarize opposition and thereby destabilize U.S. legitimacy in the region. This view has indeed become a reality since yesterday, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the U.S. supported candidate in the previous elections, issued a statement in sharp contrast to the Bush administration's unconditional support of Israel, in which Kamal condemns the attacks against Lebanon. Nevertheless, Blair proposed instead, "I could go and just talk," and there would be no risk involved to the U.S. In any event, the baked good proved more distracting than Blair's advice was influential, because Rice will be making an unannounced trip to Lebanon, yet to what purpose or end her visit might serve remains unclear.

Meanwhile Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, issued a statement yesterday stating, “The scale of killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.” In other words, the bombing of civilian targets, on all sides, will be recognized before the international court, as it should, as a war crime. “International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities," whereby "[i]ndiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians. [...] Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged innocent civilians is unjustifiable.”

And so with the judiciary branch of the UN already defining the bombings as war crimes, and the humanitarian relief efforts of the WHO pleading for intervention to attend to civilians, the organization remains overwhelmingly crippled by the power of one man's symbolic gesture: the raising of a hand in objection, a veto.

Where are the Lebanese?

I open the New York Times webpage to read the morning news. There, captioning the featured article with photo, titled "News Analysis: Iran's Long Shadow," the following is speculated: Iran’s support for Hezbollah has a twofold purpose: to deflect attention from its nuclear program and to further position itself as a powerful regional player. An analysis, largely speculative, that reflects the Bush administration's perception of Iran and Syria in supporting Hezbollah, both financially and with weaponry. A perception clearly understood in the rest of the world with this parallel: that the U.S. supports Israel with even greater financing and more sophisticated weaponry.

I imagine this headline, The U.S. support for Israel has a twofold purpose: to deflect attention from its occupation of Iraq and to further position itself as a powerful regional player. Again, an entirely speculative statement -one that I do not agree with-, but who is to say this wouldn't stand as newsworthy in the Middle East?

I open the NYTimes article, and next to it: FOR THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL DONATE NOW. An advertisement in the column to donate to the Israel Solidarity Fund, its purpose: "Caring for those in need, rescuing those in harm's way, and renewing and strengthening the Jewish people in New York, in Israel, and around the world." The irony of advertising in news sources that posit their assessments as objective, truthful and balanced.

Following the Senate's lead, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass a resolution today in support of Israel's offense against Hezbollah. (Hamas, on the other hand, seems to be ignored.) The Washington Post offers insight into the political motivations of Congressmen and women who are seeking domestic support among Jewish voters in an election year. It would seem that the U.S. elected officials clearly know not what they do; if the U.S. conceives of its position as a Public Relations game -a perverse comparison, considering the lives lost and at stake- then this resolution will only fuel the anti-American-Israel sentiment in the world.

237 dead in Lebanon, 25 in Israel, 500,000 displaced persons in less than one week. The Israeli bombings of Lebanese civilian targets are claimed to be "mistakes" and then further justified as a "consequence" for harboring terrorists. A Greek Orthodox church was bombed yesterday, killing the ten civilians seeking refuge inside, as were targeted privately owned factories -pharmaceutical, dairy and paper manufacturers- as well as new strikes on Beirut International Airport and on roads and bridges that lead out of Lebanon.

Israeli troops entered Lebanon this morning, following yesterday's assertion by the Israeli government that the conflict may continue for weeks. On Israel's second front, tanks rolled into a Gaza refugee camp. Israel's United Nations Ambassador Dan Gillerman stated before cameras on CNN, "What is going on at the moment is a number of Israeli ground troops very near to the border on the Lebanese side, trying to destroy some Hezbollah outposts. [...] This is an operation which is very measured, very local," he said. "This is no way an invasion of Lebanon. This is no way the beginning of any kind of occupation of Lebanon."

Is Israel using disproportionate force? Dan Gillerman then was quoted as saying in a pro-Israel rally in New York, “You’re damn right we are. [...] If your cities were shelled the way ours were, you would use much more force than we are or we ever will.”

The contents of what remains missing in the political jockeying, continued bombing and journalism: the Lebanese.

The Language of War

The Bush administration's portrayal of the U.S stance regarding Israel's two-front offensive against Hezbollah and Hamas is deceptively passive. When Bush said on Thursday that "Israel has the right to defend herself," it would seem that his administration desires to project an image of having washed its hands clean of the Israeli attacks in Lebanon and in Gaza. That is, Israel has the right to "defend herself" against "terrorists" -an innocent victim faced with a male aggressor, no doubt- just as the U.S. exercized its right to defend itself with preemptive strikes against "terrorists" in Iraq. Call it an enabling justification of the Israeli government's military blockade of Lebanon by air, by sea, and now, after the continued bombing of major highways leading to Syria, by ground. Within its own structure of reason, of logic, the rhetoric of war does indeed have a justification, however unjustified its acts of violence may be.

But when the Security Council of the United Nations voted to condemn Israel's use of disproportionate force, U.S. ambassador John Bolton exercized the power of veto, striking down the UN resolution proposed by Qatar to condemn Israel's offense against civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza. The U.S. attempt to paralize international intervention in the escalating violence in the Middle East is no longer a passive matter, but a dangerously active policy to prevent mediation in the conflict.

Later, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow commented, "[the President] believes the Israelis [...] should limit as much as possible so-called collateral damage, not only to facilities but also to human lives," thereby revealing the first and only sense of concern aired so far by the Bush administration. Apparently, Israel may attack all "she" wants, as long as the innocent dead and structural damage remain minimal. However, with only three days of heavy bombing, not to mention a significant death toll, I believe the "situation" has already passed this threshold of damage.

I suppose, in light of the U.S. justification for Israel's State-sponsored violence, that the Bush administration might find the Israeli army is taking a humanitarian approach to bombing civilian targets. After all, Israeli war planes did drop leaflets over the southern suburbs of Beirut, warning residents to evacuate the area before their homes would be bombed a few hours later. These targets, aside from homes, have included power sources, water supplies, gas stations, roads, and of course the Beirut International Airport. Clearly an indication of Israel's concern to make the offense against Hezbollah a "clean" operation.

With this humanitarian approach to war in mind, it seems secondary, then, that Bush is alone among world leaders (with the exception of the Prime Minister of Canada), who believe the conflict should be mediated urgently and with great caution. Two days ago, Spanish President Zapatero said in an interview with Punto Radio, "From my point of view, Israel is mistaken. One thing is legitimate defense, and another is to launch a counteroffensive of generalized attack against Lebanon, and in Gaza, that will surely bring nothing more than an intensification of violence." France, Germany, China, and an overwhelming majority of the United Nations, are but a few world leaders who agree with Zapatero.

Even the Secretary of State in the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, expressed the concern of Pope Benedicto XVI. "In particular, the Holy Seat deeply laments the attack against Lebanon, a free and sovereign country, and reiterates its close ties with its people who have already suffered a lot to defend their independence," said Sodano on Vatican Radio. And when the Vatican shows deeper concern -though no more active or participatory- than the White House, I believe we do have a problem.

The events of the past few days have lead undoubtedly to an intensification of violence, of threats from all sides. "The Islamic resistance warns against targeting civilians and the infrastructure," a statement read on Hezbollah TV advised. "It (resistance) specifically announces that it will quickly shell the city of Haifa and nearby areas if the southern suburbs and the city of Beirut are subjected to any direct Israeli aggression." And in comments made by Israeli Minister of Interior, Ronnie Bar-On stated, "If the Lebanese government fails to take control over the border and put a stop to Hizbullah's shooting, [if] it fails in restoring calm in Southern Lebanon, we'll bring the Wild West to the area," a Wild West inhabited by unruly savages and cowboys who will establish order by lawless means. Call it a telling association between the already-despised American support for Israel -a cowboy president and an allied State making war on barbaric "injuns" and terrorists- and an abuse of "preemptive strikes" that the U.S. first cited as its justification for the post-9/11 world "war on terror".

Meanwhile, Israeli Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz, openly accused Syria and Iran of being behind the Hezbollah retalliation against Israeli strikes on Thursday, calling these two countries "a new axis of evil," a grave reminder for the dangers of the Bush administration's language in times of war. The same day, Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejad phoned Syrian President Bashar Assad and told the Syrian leader that if Israel widens its military operation to target Syria, "this will be considered like attacking the whole Islamic world and this regime will receive a very fierce response."

I leave you with one last remark, an analysis that speaks to the cultural (i.e., socio-political) tensions for the escalation of the conflict, which go well beyond a discussion of rhetoric, what the language of diplomats and politicians, generals and prime ministers tend to misunderstand in the potential future impact of the situation at hand. Juan Cole, president of the Global Americana Institute and professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, offers his perception of Israel's offense in Lebanon and Gaza:

Americans have to understand that when Israel goes wild and bombs a civilian airport and civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, a lot of the world's Catholics (Lebanon is partially a Catholic country) and its 1.4 billion Muslims blame the United States for it. Israel is given billions every year by the United States, including sophisticated weaponry that is now being trained on the slums of south Beirut. It should also be remembered that Bin Laden said, at least, that he started thinking about hitting New York when he saw that 1982 Israeli destruction of the skyscrapers or "towers" of Lebanon. How many future Bin Ladens are watching with horror and rage and feelings of revenge as Israel drops bombs on civilian tenement buildings? When will this blow back on Americans? (I mean blow back in other ways than an already painful further spike in petroleum prices).

Camarón Lives

The popular cult for Elvis has its own equivalent in the world of flamenco in Spain, and its deity goes by the name Camarón de la Isla. Camarón was greatly responsible, along with guitarrist Paco de Lucía, for having changed the sound of flamenco in the 1960s and '70s by introducing a bass line, electronic mixing and orchestra, as well as the hollow sound of the cajón, a box-drum of Peruvian origin. But Camarón's signature voice is, like Elvis', his most distinguishable feature. In his later years, with a throat lashed by tobacco and heavily scarred by heroin, Camarón may be likened to the Viva Las Vegas Elvis, a star audibly burdened by the excesses of stardom and drug abuse, yet somehow never past his prime. Maybe this is why the "rawness" of his sound may be said to resemble what was, within the discovery of Elvis by his first audiences, a sensuality that had never been heard before, at least in the mainstream range of pop music. After his death in 1992 the cantaor became elevated to legendary status, the kitsch object that most exemplifies this: the "Camarón Lives" bumper sticker that immortalizes his fame. And then last year, a movie. The photo at right below is a still of Jaime Chávarri in Camarón (2005) for which he won a Goya, the equivalent of an Oscar, for best actor interpreting the role pictured here as glam gitano Camarón of the late 1970s.

This campy excess -both in the singer's image and evident in his voice- is the stuff of what makes Camarón so appealing, at least for me. As someone who long ago developed an allergy to all things "traditionally Spanish" -and flamenco did fall into this category of essentializing stereotypes of Spain- I thought listening to flamenco required a sort of initiation to understand what the hell it was about. For me, it required a love of Andalucía and an acquired ear to descipher the flamenco singer's disonant wailing. Since then I've become more interested accidentally, entering (very superficially) first through the electronic "chill-out" sound of Chambao, or the pop-R&B fusion of Ojos de Brujo. Then came an attraction to the kitschy appeal of traditional music -though not flamenco- of divas like Rocío Jurado and María Dolores Pradera. Which then passed through the more traditional sounds and bawdy appeal of María Jiménez, and the mourning of Mayte Martín. The trajectory of my interest in flamenco, if it can be called that, reaches Camarón as a sound that appeals to all of these interests-- at times decadent, sometimes melacholic, at once a parody of itself and yet so deeply original in his sound that it refuses to be categorized simply as any one of these things.

Which is why I want to share the song "Soy Gitano" ("I'm a gypsy"). (Click the song title to download.) When Camarón gets to the part "A mí me gusta saborear" after the third chorus, he goes crazy, and this is exactly the kind of appeal I'm talking about. I hope you like. He is, after all, the King...

Que ya no puedo aguantarme,
y ni vivir de esta manera
porque yo no pueo,
porque yo no quiero
ni aunque dios quiera
porque ya no puedo,
ay porque yo no pueo,
ay porque ya no pueo
vivir sin ella

Soy gitano y vengo a tu casamiento
a partirme la camisa
la camisita que tengo
yo soy gitano
y vengo a tu casamiento
a partirme la camisa que te tengo

Me retiro
del esparto yo m’aparto,
ay que del olivo ma retiro
ay del sarmiento m’arrepiento
de haberte querío tanto
ay que del olivo
ma retiro

Soy gitano...

A mi me gusta saboreá la hierba la hierba buena
un cante por soleá
y una voz clara y serena
y una guitarra y tus ojos ay al laito duna candela

Soy gitano...

The Dream of Reason

I should like to rethink the interpretation of Goya’s title for the work “El sueño de la razón produce monstruous” because the word sueño may be understood to imply a meaning that is not conveyed by the word “sleep” alone. For the word sueño alludes to “sleep” as much as it may invoke a state of “dreaming”, of imagination. I have in mind a specific "dream"-- that of Goya and his contemporaries in the early nineteenth century, the institutionally marginzalized ilustrados in Spain who aspired to reform the Antiguo Régimen and modernize the State to become a democracy. Thereby the context of Goya’s image lends itself to an interpretation of dreams, of the human imaginary and its projects, of a collective aspiration for deliverance from "social ills" by Enlightened ideals. My interpretation of Goya as well is informed by an interpretation of dreams, of temporal fissures, of historical “monsters”, and of the madness depicted in the Caprichos. For the title of Goya’s etching may also be read as the “dream of reason that produces monsters", whereby sueño alludes to a project borne from the collective imaginary, a conjuring up of fantasy or, during the “enlightened” era, the frustrated attempts to dismantle the antiquated institutions of Church and Monarchy. Here I should like to revisit the dreaming subject in Goya’s etching, to turn the Enlightened faith in the reasoning subject, the “moral” of this image, on its head; insomuch as Goya may have wished to exhibit that the sleep of reason produces monsters, therein also lies the possibility of reading the artist’s “Sueño” as the content of the “dream of reason” at its most perverse. The dream or aspiration for modernization as having produced monsters in the name of reason, by a positivist faith in progress, and by means of realizing its projects through violence. The nightmare Goya portrays in his dreaming artist, I will suggest, is not only a conjuring of fantasy from the position of a solitary or mad, dreaming subject, but is as well borne from the very rationale that eradicates the “monsters” left in its wake—the violence and terror produced throughout the struggle for modernity Spain, the horrors that do not correlate within the positivist imaginary of Enlightenened promise. To ask of enlightened man, in retrospect, by invoking the question of philosopher Manuel Cruz, “how is it that this man, who was capable at times of carrying society towards a path to progress, who created the conditions of his wellbeing, would also carry it to (and maintain it at) the very border of catastrophe"?

La fotógrafa

Recently, Patty won a national photo award in Spain. Her entry, Cartas de mi país, is on display at an exhibit in Madrid and will move to Barcelona and Valencia later this summer. Co-sponsored by Correos -the national post office- and Western Union in Spain, the second annual contest aims to make public the subject of immigration in Spain through the arts. We know this because the Secretary of State for Immigration and Emigration, Consuelo Rumí, said so during the press conference before the opening of the exhibit.

Here's a photo of Patty talking to the Spanish press. We're so proud of her/you, bb! Congratulations! Only next time, could you flip your diva hair when the spotlight is on you?

Twisting the Genre

I've taken up reading again. A couple of months ago Patty gifted me a book of director Pedro Almodóvar's writings from the 1980s, a compiled series of essays published in the La Luna and Diario 16, two pop culture magazines central to the happenings of the Movida. The essays are published under the title Patty Diphusa, a protagonist of Almodóvar's own choni creation, a comic book character that may be described as somewhere between a transexual prostitute and a small town girl who moves to the bustling capital city of Madrid to adopt a more "modern" lifestyle. The protagonist's name Patty Diphusa is a play on words, invoking the adjective patidifusa, which can be used in colloquial speech to describe a reaction of simple-minded awe at something spectacular, like the "innocent" girl's exerpience -and of Almodóvar's own- of becoming exposed to the sex, drugs and rock and roll of 1980s Madrid.

What Almodóvar has become known for in his films, which becomes apparent in his early writings, is the twisting of genre, whereby taboo or sacred subjects -the most sensitive of social issues, like Catholicism- become perverted to jolt the expectations of the viewer or reader, an exercise in camp and kitsch, now two signature features of Almodóvar's irreverant story lines. This sort of "twisting the genre" is exhibited on the cover of the book, with Almodóvar himself dressed in a bullfighter traje de luces and smoking a phallic cigar, both suggestive of hypermasculine Spanish traditionalism, while wearing makeup and a red carnation in his hair like the (female) folkloric flamenco dancer.

I've translated some of the story here, which will undoubtedly seem offensive to mainstream American tastes for the story's irreverance for matters of class, gender, and race. But by questioning what makes this story uncomfortable I think the work might speak more to American obsessions with these taboo subjects rather than to the author's relationship with them, which is why the author dedicates the work to director Douglas Sirk, a master of classic Hollywood melodrama who treats all of these themes with a more palatable regard for his audience of address. I hope you enjoy!

"Written on the Wind"

Dedicated to Douglas Sirk

I've just had a black baby. I don't know how it could have happened. If my pimp finds out he'll kill me, if my mother finds out she'll kill me, if the Sergeant of Torrejón's wife finds out she'll kill me, if the Sergeant finds out he'll kill me for not having taken precaution. I think I'm in danger.

I get out of bed. It's cold in Madrid... all the cold of winter has been given a place in my bedroom. The child, although black, has blue eyes. And it looks at me. It's hungry. I call the restaurant Mesón Paixariños across the street from my house and I order a Galician pot of seafood for my baby.

What can I do? My mother is about to come from my hometown. (...) Americans aren't nice people. I've read it many times in the newspaper, but never wanted to believe it. They're a race of giants without a heart. But, how could I explain that to my mother? She will discover that I'm an alternative girl, that I pay rent with my coño. I'll have to abandon everything, abandon Spain, go where no one knows my present. I'll have to wait tables. If only the child were white. Why does this prejudice exist against blacks? I like them. I've always liked them. That's why I let the Sergeant screw me. (...)

A knock at the door. Who would it be? It's the waiter from Paixariños. An innocent young man, in love with me and with football. A simple young man who smells of pork.
Waiter: Here's your order.
Me: It smells really good.
Waiter: Eat it soon. It's hot. I've heated it up for you.
Me: Never get involved with a black man from the Base. Keep serving food in the restaurant, unaware of the strife in this world. It's not too late to save yourself.

The waiter doesn't understand me, but he seems moved.
Waiter: Your face looks awful.
Me: I was working all night. It was my turn to be on call at the hospital.

I had to lie to him.
Me: Go. The clients are waiting for you to serve breakfast. And a good breakfast is the best way to begin the day.

He leaves. I'm alone. And this is how I'd like to be for the rest of my days. But within a few minutes my pimp will be here, he wants to get my money and to meet my mother who has come to Madrid to see the first Communion of my sister's child. I live in a hostile world. No one sings me love songs. No one protects me unless they smack me up first. I'll be a housemaid. I hope to find a rich family in Germany, with a Mrs. who has a husband that's my type and gives me dresses when they don't fit his wife. I curse the world. My child cries. And that's the only thing that matters.

I look over and see him eating my panties. The poor thing is hungry and waiting. I put the Galician dish on the kitchen table next to the bedstand.

"Eat it up."

I say to him. And he looks at me with his blue eyes. Surely this child will be a photography model, or perhaps a ballerina. He will seduce all the wives of the most important presidents. And I will be able to live like a queen when I'm old, because with this life ahead of me my complexion will start to fall apart any day. But I will get myself operated on when my child is famous. I have to hurry. I must pack my suitcase...

The Photographer

The photographer shoots her subject willingly—a building, a mannequin, an abstract flow of colors—each photo perhaps consciously chosen in content, in framing, or perhaps accidentally so. The photographer might be working alone, in a team, or with a partner, which would presumably influence and negotiate the end product of the work as well. The image, once developed, would become edited to the style, taste and meaning implied by the photographer’s intent, even manipulated further among several subjective interests if other people are involved in its production; however this process of editing may also be influenced by the market, and by the intended audience of the work: for whom is the photograph taken? Does it sufficiently meet the demands of and desires for the project, either the photographer’s or the publisher’s, or perhaps even those of her intended audience who will receive the work and critique it? And perhaps among the most unconscious of decisions made by the photographer throughout the editing and developing process, the influences of personal as well as collective taste, of the photographer’s style as well those of her influences leave their imprint on the work. For instance, what might be regarded inappropriate or “in bad taste” to photograph for one audience, might be perfectly acceptable for another. The photographer is perhaps unaware of these influences, of her approximation of a subject and the ways in which she frames these images, though they are indeed embedded in processes of decision-making that form the end product, her photographic work. What other photographers, individual or groups recognized as “schools”, inform her approach to the photographed subject? What sorts of preexisting expectations or limitations from an audience influence her approach to the photographed subject? What cultural norms exist within the visual genre, which render the image perceived by another as publishable, appropriate, or perhaps even regarded as adventurous? For even when the photograph reaches an audience—if it is distributed for “collective consumption” or reception, as Roland Barthes reminds us—there exist preeminent qualifications of selection that would, in the photograph’s future, earn it a place worthy in the archive or museum, in a photo collection or by criticism.

If I have belabored the point with examples of how the photograph (i.e., one kind of cultural “object”) is produced, it is because these unconscious and conscious actions, decisions, and accidents (i.e., the processes between the photographer and the audiences of reception) play out as exchanges and judgments in the social field, whether influenced by a market economy of production, the “subjective” motivations of the photographer, or the expectations and influences that inform processes toward achieving the end product, her photographic work. Surely, a consideration of a different historical moment—the late nineteenth century, let’s say—would alter the landscape of these processes: the demand of photography, the technology of the camera and developing techniques, the cultural and social norms by which photography is produced for an audience. As would the processes be significantly different were I to take a work of fiction as an example as my cultural “object”, whereby markets for publishing, collective revisions and editors, as well as readership, vary among audiences and for the intended genre of the work.

But it is the case of Freixa’s work that especially interests me for its ability to suggest that, despite the span of a few years within which the selected photographs were taken, the circumstances of these social processes sublimate in a constellation of disturbed images—as I perceive this disturbance from the photographs’ content and form—within the greater cultural context of post-Franco Spain. Here is where the photographs in question—both haunted and haunting—expose the social field as unsettled, which sociological narratives on the Transition aptly describe, but so too may they be witnessed in representation in the cultural object. It is as if the aesthetic evoked by the staging of these frames were to reveal the content of its own disturbance, entirely a socio-political (i.e., historical) matter. Or to think of the photograph as metaphor, perhaps the negative of culture, upon exposure, brings to light an image of history.

Photo titled "Resuscitation" by Patty Keller. For Patty, who is much more of a superstar to her friends than she's willing to believe.

A Baroness in Chains

Baroness Carmen von Thyssen Bornemisza has had enough of the city government of Madrid, and of Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. Ever since Madrid was declared a candidate for the 2012 Olympics, a bid which it lost last summer to London, the Partido Popular majority in City Hall has implemented an incessant rennovation of Spain's capital city. Construction, bulldozing, and traffic detours may be found on almost all main streets, leading Danny DeVito to comment in an interview regarding his visit to Madrid last summer that if City Hall ever finds the buried treasure, let him know. Baroness Thyssen, however, is not laughing.

One of the many "improvements in infraestructure" proposed by City Hall is the restriction of traffic flow in downtown Madrid, specifically reducing the Paseo del Prado to two lanes of traffic from four, a project the government hopes will discourage drivers from taking their cars into the city's center. Surely, the plan might stand as one of the most ridiculous -not to mention costly- methods to reduce traffic flow in Madrid's already congested downtown. But what irks the Baroness is that this restriction of traffic flow would not only bulldoze the Paseo del Prado's 700 trees, it will also tear up her front lawn, encroaching on the property of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

The Thyssen Museum has been lauded as housing the most important private art collection of the 20th century. The museum hosts over 600 works from the Baroness' own collection, currently on loan to the museum, as well as the permanent collection (formerly the Baroness' collection, as well) acquired by the Spanish government in 1993 to the tune of 350 million dollars, making for nearly one thousand works of art housed in a building designed by internationally celebrated arquitect Rafael Moneo. And that's no small contribution to the cultural landcape of Spain's capital city.

So when Gallardón proposed the reconstruction of the Paseo del Prado (yes, the Prado Art Museum is right across the street) the Baroness abandoned all aristocratic proprieties and started to get nasty-- she threatened to pull her collection and find a more hospitable city where she might show her deceased husband's fortune in paintings. Insults ensued. Mayor Gallardón remarked, regarding the Baroness' distaste for the rennovations, "We should pay more attention to intelligence than to aristocracy," adding insult to injury. And the director of Urban Development of Madrid, Pilar Martínez, described Carmen Thyssen as "a capricious and intolerant woman, who bypasses democratic procedure and puts her personal interests before those of the citizens."

In response to these comments Thyssen retorted in an interview, "There are some things you should think about twice before saying." And in a rather ironic statement following this retort, the Baroness then continued to insult the Third World as somehow less civilized than Spain: "We're talking about something that affects the entire world, the taking care of our green spaces. It's as if we're in Brazil! And that can't be!"

Nevertheless, the Baroness realizes that time is running out after three years of bickering with City Hall. In fact, if Gallardón and his team of architects do not budge soon, she has openly declared that she will chain herself to an elevated platform in one of the trees if they do not immediately cease plans to dig up the Paseo del Prado, a statement that has earned her the regard of an aristocratic hero among environmental activists and the many citizens angered by Gallardón's push for perpetual construction. What would motivate a high-heeled aristocrat to live in a treehouse, whose sole nourishment would come from five-star catered meals delivered with the help of a rope and pulley?

"Trees have lives too. They speak," she says. And what do they say, Carmen? "They emit waves, energy, messages. They know that we are with them, that we are defending them, and they gift us with life. It's important to know this." Whether the trees know it or not, the Baroness will continue fighting. "It's that I can't just stop now. I'm a taurus by birth and when I get something in my head I become stubborn. They [those at City Hall] don't know me. Of course we'll continue fighting because, although it offends a lot of them, I know I'm right."

I hope Carmen Thyssen keeps fighting, whatever her zodiac sign, because not only would give me the chance to see a Baroness live in a treehouse; more importantly, she promises to bring some public opposition to Gallardón's mostly unchallenged plans to redesign Madrid.

Disremembering the II Republic

In an effort to show a contrasting political spin on the recuperation of Historical Memory in Spain, I wanted to offer an article from yesterday's edition of ABC newspaper regarding the new law. It doesn't take much to recognize the political spin of ABC, a conservative newspaper whose readers by and large vote for the Partido Popular, versus that of El País, which tends to run articles in favor of Spain's socialist goverment, the PSOE. If nothing else, an interesting note on journalism in Spain, starting with the contrast of headlines between the two newspapers:

The Partido Popular accuses the Government of digging up the past as a political weapon
«It's surprising that President Zapatero declares himself inheritor of the II Republic, which failed, instead of González, Guerra and Carrillo», says the PP

ABC -- 28.04.06

MADRID. "If it's bad to disregard history, it's even worse to manipulate it or misinterpret it from interested political positions. The poorly named 'recuperation of historical memory' is nothing but the misuse of the past as a political weapon." With this argument, yesterday the PP refused to vote in favor of a proposition for a law to render homage to the victims of the Civil War and Francoism, and likewise for the initiators of the democratic transition, which came through with votes in favor from socialist party (PSOE), and minority parties, except for the ERC which abstained.

The PP was very hard with the socialists -to those who accused of proportioning historical revisionism as revindication- and, especially, with President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. "It seems surprising -some even call it ridiculous- that Mr. Zapatero declares himself inheritor of the II Republic, which failed, instead of Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra, and Santiago Carrillo, which played a transcendent role in the constitutional pact," representative from the PP Manuel Atencia asserted before Congress.

The principal group of opposition believes that the II Republic is history "and so it should be treated." On this point, members of the PP believe that the initiative approved yesterday by Congress is contrary to the constitutional pact. "In the first place," said Atencia, "because it pretends to establish an official truth. Secondly, because it attempts to revise the political transition. And, lastly, because it undoes the unanimous accord that Congress approved on November 20th, 2002."

The Role of Alfonso Guerra

That day -with the absolute majority of the PP in session-, the Constitutional Commission drafted a text that emphasized that the Constitution of 1978 was named, by all parties, the "Constitution of Agreement", since it intended to bring closure to a tragic past of civil confrontation between Spaniards. Atencia brought it upon himself to remember that Alfonso Guerra played a relevant role so that this accord could reach a unanimous agreement.

Meanwhile, the socialists and their allies attempted to defend themselves before the criticisms of the PP with the argument that the initiative does not pretend to "reopen wounds." The spokesperson for the PSOE, Ramón Jáuregui, called it "erroneous" the way in which members of the PP look at historical memory that, according to him, "should illuminate our present and the political debate without disguise of a thin veil."

In discussion the leader of the Izquierda Unida (IU), Gaspar Llamazares, lamented that the "Spanish Rightwing" feels so "offended" for the recuperation of "memory of the Republic and the commemoration of the anti-Francoist democrats."

Remembering the II Republic

All parties except the Partido Popular (PP) approve a bill to declare 2006 the Year of Historical Memory
The bill, now made law, proposes that the Second Republic (1931-1936) be recognized as the antecedent of democracy in Spain.

ELPAIS.es - España - 27-04-2006

All parlimentary groups of Congress, except the PP, approved a bill today that declares 2006 as Year of Historical Memory, and will require the Government to present, within a month, a report on the situation of the victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975). All of the parties explained to Congress that the new law does not intend to "reopen wounds," with the exception of the Partido Popular, which sustains that the initiative pretends to "use the past as a political weapon."

The proposal earned 172 votes in favor, 131 against -all delegates from the PP- and four abstentions from the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), which considered the initiative insufficient. The bill proposes that the II Republic be recognized as the antecedent of the current democratic state and requires the Zapatero's government to foment a homage to the victims of the Spanish Civil War and of Francoism within the year.

This recognition will be accompanied by the circulation of government issued stamps and coins in honor of those who defended "the constitutional order established in the II Republic" and who suffered from Francoist repression. The Partido Popular presented an ammendment for 2006 to be declared "Year of Consentment," a proposal which was rejected by all other parliamentary groups.

Inheritors of the Republic
In his speech before Congress, the spokesperson for the PP, Manuel Atencia, announced that his group would vote against all initiatives on Historical Memory, since "they are contrary to the constitutional pact (of 1978), intend to impose an oficial truth, attempt to revise the democratic transition, divide Spaniards and reopen old wounds."

According to Atencia, "the II Republic is history and should be treated as such." Also, he reminded Congress that the constitutional monarchy born in 1978 brought with it the "overcoming of old conflicts." After lamenting that President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero "declares himself inheritor of the II Republic, rather than inheritor of (his own party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE, and its politicians from the democratic transition in the 1980s,) Felipe González or Alfonso Guerra," then Atencia assured that the PP does indeed feel it is the inheritor of the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD), the party that "piloted the transition." The socialist spokesperson Ramón Jáuregui called it "lamentable" that the PP "is incapable of commemorating collectively such transcending events of our history" and retorted that "memory cannot be avoided" and that "the transition confused pardon with forgetting." During his intervention, the spokesperson for the Izquierda Unida (IU-ICV), Gaspar Llamazares, author of the initiative, assured that the PP should not feel like it is the inheritor of Francoism, but of the "best democratic transition" and insisted that a recuperation of Historical Memory does not intend to cause confrontation among Spaniards.

"Not forgetting is the best guarantee for a collective process in democratic terms," commented Carles Campuzano of the CiU, while the representative for the PNV Aitor Esteban accused the PP of situating the Republic "at the same level as the years of Francoist dictatorship." Lastly, Agustí Cerdá of the ERC asked that the opportunity to recuperate memory not be passed up, as "the people deserve it, and all of the victims."

La soledad imaginaria

"Daydream" by Patty Keller.

Chasing Trauma

After considering whether or not to include an image in today's posting, I opted for one of my favorites from Patty's ever growing collection of astounding photography in Madrid. This one she has titled "Silence," which appropriately describes this morning's experience.

Fátima's boyfriend Pablo and I get together once or twice a week to practice his conversational English, a necessary skill for his work in television broadcasting, as a majority of the international production crews communicate in this second language. Pablo works for a company that produces the live broadcasts we see on the nightly news, usually from breaking stories in Mauritania or Dubai, Baghdad or wherever the company sends his crew with a few hours notice. Having worked several years under these "on-call" conditions, Pablo and Fátima have seen countless disasters, both natural and man-made, and have become witness to those moments of crisis we define as 'History' with a capital 'H'-- the Palestinian elections, the War in Iraq, terrorist bombings in Jerusalem, genocide in Africa... the list goes on. In short, a rather vulgar approximation to this kind of work might be described simply as 'chasing trauma' on two accounts: for the gravity of the disasters they are contracted by television to pursue, and for the speed with which the market of 'capturing the TV image' requires them to be at 'ground zero' in an instant, well before the human mind can take stock of what one is really witnessing.

So as part of our conversation class I ask Pablo to tell me about his work and the kind of travel he has done over the course of the past few years. Without hesitation he consults his laptop computer to open a folder of images of the tsunami in Indonesia, going through the photos one by one to describe what he saw during the 28 days he lived among the devastation of the coast. "Twenty-eight days," he says, "and only two showers. Can you imagine?" He chuckles, and so do I in response. Pablo flips through more photos of the television crew unloading fresh water packets and food rations from the back of a truck, hands grabbing at the supplies and far off in the distance still others running after the vehicle. And behind the people running towards the truck, a terrain leveled and scattered with debris, the only recognizable landmark being a tugboat sitting on top of crushed houses, two miles inland from the water. Then he shows me photos of people, portraits of a lost girl no more than eight years old, another of a man who, wearing a mask to combat the stench, picked through the floating corpses one by one to see if he could identify his parents, despite the waterlogged bloating of their faces that make his task impossible, and yet another of a team of townsmen dumping crane loads of mangled and deformed bodies into a mass grave.

The most shocking photos are those that take me a moment to indentify what I'm looking at, even as Pablo explains the content of the photographs. Witnessing these photos bears a repulsive moment of recognition, of anagnoresis, when I realize after asking myself "what is this?" that what I am seeing is a photograph of splintered debris and body parts floating in water, the torsos and arms bloated and bloodied, unrecognizable to anything we associate with the human, but that which bears the sign of pure horror as beyond death, as dismemberment and putrefaction. Or the photo of a mangled pile of branches that, upon closer inspection, reveals to me that this messy heap is in reality part human, burying the washed up remains of a young boy whose face has decayed to expose the cheek bone and decomposed eyes giving us a milky glass stare. The horror of these images is seeded in that moment of recognition, when the unseemingly real suddenly becomes recognizably (albeit formerly) human to the witness at present, a leap made possible over time and space, a return to the moment of the photograph and its reception at present-- in sum, a sort of rhetorical 'haunt.'

It is as if Pablo's recounting and reliving of these horrors--right there in a coffee shop in our neighborhood in Madrid--implies me as a witness to the destruction of the tsunami as well, not in any way the same as Pablo's experience, but through the seeping into consciousness of an event--despite the geographical distance and time that has passed since--, a traumatic event that is often regarded as incomprehensible, insufficient for words, or inutterable. The insufficiency of words might just be a cover for what's really at work, that repulsion (or not wanting to become witness to, the impulse to turn away from the images) is in effect only a conditioned response, a way for the 'civilized' to manage what it regards as indecency.

It is this irony that struck me. Pablo's work in television to report the disaster, to transmit images into the living room of a nightly viewing audience, cannot begin to approximate the impact of his own experience in first-person. Yet, perhaps here lies the ethical power of narrative, and of fiction.

Spanish Kitsch & Camp

Recently Mike commented that all things appealing to mainstream gay culture (e.g., gym bodies, drag shows, Dolly Parton) may be described as an overfulfillment of socio-sexual categories, a kind of spoofing of hetero norms, so to speak. I'm going to take a stab and say that what's at work here--and what Mike is getting at--is the production of kitsch, the cropping up of a parody when the social reaches its saturation point. It seems fitting to say that contemporary Spanish culture squeezes its way into that list (right after Dolly Parton) for the unexpected, everyday moments of accidental kitsch that are not typified as uniquely 'gay' at all, but that one encounters walking down the street, for instance, or by watching a few minutes of television. We might take this photo as an example, where the actress posing before Franco's monumental grave, the Valley of the Fallen, parodies and over-performs the norms of traditional (pro-nationalist and Catholic) Spanishness by bearing a crucifix, flamenco mantilla and national banner with matching red and yellow necklace. It probably seems redundant to say that understanding kitsch has its own set of prerequisites, because in order to 'get the joke' in the photo above, the audience would have to recognize that Francoism upheld a similar image of traditional (pro-nationlist and Catholic) Spanishness for the parody to make any sense. But this is where being from another country proves helpful to point out something so simple...

Clearly the photo above intends to be a parody. The actress is part of a comedy troupe that accompanies performance artist Leo Bassi's tours of Francoist Madrid, where he and busloads of his fans cause public disturbances in the most revered sites of remembrance for Francoist sympathizers. If his comedy lies in the kitsch value of overperforming and thereby mocking Spanish traditionalism, then his political aim is to point out those grave contradictions of the Francoist legacy that remain in the present, such as the Catholic Church and its involvement in politics, even after over twenty years since the democratic transition.

But the intentional parody of Bassi's actors is no less relevant than the accidental kitsch that seems to crop up in everyday life. And this is what I mean when I say that being a foreigner gives you an advantage to recognize this kind of kitsch, if anything because it's immediately more alienating than for those who are used to seeing it everyday. So, what's so different from this photo (courtesy of Patty Keller) of the Spanish señora and the actress at the Valley of the Fallen? Aren't both performing the limits of an imaginary, whether the Spanish señora or the Nationalist sympathizer? Granted, it's just one example of what one sees walking down the street in Madrid. But after all, it's this kind of oscillation between the intentional and the accidental parody of forms that makes me think contemporary Spanish cultural production is more prone to these kinds of saturations--whereby an agent over-performs the ideals of an imagined social category, beyond the scope of what was once an idealized norm--and particularly so in the wake of imposed social norms from Francoism. After all, Francoism's legacy of sociopolitical norms--enforced violently under dictatorship--extended beyond a politics of the State--into domestic life, shaping the roles of women and men/wives and husbands, in the workplace, etc.--and these practices have, even today, been difficult to shake.

Is this not the very principle of kitsch and play on gender norms that Almodóvar has understood so well throughout his film career?

25 Years of (secured) Spanish Democracy

Thursday marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of 23-F. On February 23, 1981, General Antonio Tejero and the armed national guardsmen under his command stormed the Congress building in Madrid, holding captive the representatives in attendance and President Adolfo Suárez. Tejero fired several shots in the air, shouting these now parodied words: "¡Todos al suelo! ¡He dicho todos al suelo, coño!" (Everyone on the floor! I said everyone on the floor, dammit!) Tanks rolled into the streets of Valencia, and the nation tuned into the news for word of the outcome. That evening King Juan Carlos I appeared on television, dressed in his military uniform as commander and chief of the armed forces, and reassured Spanish citizens that no band of military dissidents could overturn the wishes of nation that had voted, three years earlier, for a democratic constitution. The coup failed, marking the assured beginning of democratic stability in a country emerging from forty years of dictatorial isolation and oppression.

And with the assurance of democracy in Spain, that small wonder called la movida--already underway with all its goths, punks, queers, rockers and white rain hairspray--gained momentum. Here's to Wishing La Movida a Happy 25th Anniversary. To celebrate the failed coup this Thursday, find your fishnets, lipstick and heroin. And don't forget to rock it out to McNamara and Almodóvar (pictured here) and their funky 1980s hit, Suck It to Me. Enjoy!

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Obscenities (a suggestion)

Those matters a culture tends to render obscene (whether understood as a totality of seeing, or that which a culture keeps hidden from view) manifest both at the center of the modern and at its outer limits, as one and the same, the ‘other’ and its uncanny double within. For, the production of knowledge in modernity—an operation that organizes itself according to a system of logic based on methodology, on precedent and ‘truth’—is propelled by the descriptive nature of its ever-absorbing and totalizing function, to accumulate until all may be regimented according to the rules of its own logic. The catch being, the very obscenities that escape the ever-accumulating and totalizing bodies of knowledge at the boundaries of ‘what is known’ form an uncanny closet within the modern, consisting in the matters denied by a culture, even as the content of these limits (at once internal and perceived as external) disturb and unsettle the very system that propels its machination.

Or, if Goya’s etching may be some indication of modernity’s legacy at the beginning of nineteenth century, it seems that The Dream of Reason Produces [its own] Monsters. Pictured below are two examples of this obscenity: modern war waged in the name of progress, and society's stigmatization of illness.

Above: "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" by Francisco de Goya, from Los Caprichos (Plate 43, second edition, c. 1803).

Below: "Una pequeña historia de amor" by Alberto García-Alix, from García-Alix Fotografías 1977-1998 (Madrid: La Fábrica, 1998).

Kudos to the World of Fashion

Despite all appearances the woman at left is not comedian Amy Sedaris, nor her stunt double, but none other than the Spanish designer María Lafuente. The man next to her is Andrés Sardá, a lingerie designer who has made a career out of being a socially acceptable viejo verde (dirty old man). Why the photo of this odd couple, you ask? Next week boasts two major events in the world of fashion in Spain: handbag aficionada Patty Keller will celebrate her birthday, and it also happens to be Pasarela Cibeles, Madrid's International Fashion Week.

I say kudos to the world of Spanish fashion. If fashion publicity of the 1980s and '90s may be characterized by the bolstering of a false political conscience, a sort of positive will to change the world one Barbie doll at a time, then the current decade seems to have lost that pretense entirely. There was a time not so long ago when Benetton promoted in its ad campaigns for clothes, that every consumer can become an 'activist' of sorts. Rather than running the typical photos of this season's wardrobe, Benetton used their advertising space in magazines to make the public aware of social ills, like Third World hunger, genocide, and oil spills (all labeled, no doubt, with the green tag Benetton). And it worked. Sales skyrocketed due to an international appeal for 'social consciousness' that the label image carried. That ad campaign evolved into the 'United Colors of Benetton,' promoting a celebration of diversity--not as a recognition of class difference or of the problems of racism that persist today, but as an erasure of these problems through the celebration of a multi-ethnic, universal culture of consumerism. Free to be you and me. Up with people. Buy my clothes. All of these slogans definitely a Zeitgeist of the 1980s and '90s.

And so, if the world of fashion can be any indication, the last two decades squeezed out a glimmer of hope from an eroding sense of postmodernism's adage, And What Now? Whereas, María Lafuente's t-shirt tells all about the shattering of that image. It reads in Spanish, French and English,
"I cannot
change...
the world."

What Would Marlene Dietrich Do? (WWMDD?)

So, a few of you have complained that my past few postings have been less personal (less snarky, really) and far from entertaining. For those who do read what I write then, this entry is dedicated to you. Both of you. Although its content does not pretend to be entertaining (and by Mike's definition of entertainment as "waiting for tea water to boil," I'm not sure what standards I'm being held to here) this post is certainly a return to my recent preoccupations and musings, muddled and abject as they are. And I promise to avoid using the word "monumentality", even if it means revising my entry and editing the word out, like a two-second long bleep on the Jerry Springer Show. So here's today's treat for you...

The 1930s moving picture Morocco, by director Josef Von Sternberg, is probably one of the most visually stunning films I've seen. And I don't just mean that Marlene Dietrich is a bombshell, which she is (and a sexy tuxedo-dressed woman, too), but that the film itself is a mesmerizing work that makes you think technicolor cinema has its disadvantages, as if the eye were being robbed of seeing something greater by becoming saturated with a spectrum of reality. But I promised no "theoretical" musings today. And so...

The story begins as we are introduced to an aloof cabaret singer, Mademoiselle Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich), whose nightly performances draw a full house in Mogador's most attended nightclub, most certainly to see the seductress steal the show with her stage presence and emasculating banter with the soldiers in the audience. Clearly this woman, either due to a habitual dosage of valium or mere apathy, is "tired of playing the game" with her many backstage suitors, until an unlikely encounter with Légionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) leads her to fall slowly and rather unexpectedly in love. Their relationship is one of two damaged people discovering to what ends the other would go in order that they might one day be together.

The story takes a turn for the worse, however, when we learn that Tom will be sent into the desert at dawn, charged with a dangerous mission from which he may never return. In this moment, our cabaret prima donna has two options-- stay in the club where she may never find love again, or renounce her whorish ways and follow her soldier into the desert, leaving her life of glamour and recognition behind. In the final scene, after her character's final goodbye with her lover, Marlene performs an aggressive act of determination when, staggering off into the desert heat, she kicks off her high-heeled shoes and, joining the soldiers' harem of gypsy women, she yanks the leash of a goat tied with a rope to its neck thereby taking her position among the band of women who will follow their men into the abject heart of war in the deserts of Morocco.

Some might call it love.

The New Reina Sofía: Monumentality for Monumentality's Sake

Patty has taken to photographing every minute of her wanderings through Madrid and has some beautiful photos to show for it on her website. Like this one from yesterday's adventure, when we took a stroll through Lavapiés and stumbled across what, from a distance, looked like the set of Tron the movie. The giant red cube and surrounding glass structure was, to our disbelief, the new addition to the contemporary art museum, named after the queen: El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS). The new addition is, for lack of a better term, ginormous and completely dwarfs the original building, complete with an internal patio that could easily fit a parking structure, or two. The sense of monumentality to the new addition is near impossible to describe-- rather, one gathers the sense that this architecture is designed to be experienced.

Yes, Patty and I had read about the new design; yes, we had seen digitally rendered images of what it would look like when completed; and yes, we thought, well, another celebrated "postmodern" addition to a museum. Qué bien. But clearly the architects aimed to construct a building that provokes the sense of overwhelming insignificance from its visitors in relation to this mammouth structure.

What sense of monumentality were the architects attempting to provoke in their visitors? One of insignificance in relation to modern art? Clearly this cannot be the case. To the State, then, who funded the project? To postmodernism? Or perhaps excessively just for the sake of monumentality?

In a country that in the past century has become witness to both the weilding of pharaonic economic interests by other Western nations, and to the monumentalism of a dictatorship that left its architectonic traces throughout the city, into what project does MNCARS inscribe itself by reproducing the sense of even more monumentality?

Here's a virtual tour of the new addition to the museum, which is worth the two minutes to take a look.

What Is a Monster? (Part II)

Adam Lowenstein has a new book out on horror flicks. It's called Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema and the Modern Horror Film. (And yes, the colon in the title leaves no secret--the book is a work of academic criticism.) Lowenstein explores how the production of "monsters" in a culture, specifically in the horror genre of cinema, delimits a space of the culture's traumatic events, in a way, "working through" the events of History that leave their own scars. In other words, he finds a link between Freddy Kruger and Vietnam, Jason and the Holocaust, even as most spectators would consider horror film "just a film." To give an example (and this is David Caron's example, not Lowenstein's), the movie Jaws became significantly popular in the 1980s, during the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, at a time when the deadly "unknown" virus (i.e., the shark) chose its victims without much scientific knowledge of its cause, its means of transmission, or its selection of who was suceptible to the virus. Regarding the movie, the pool of blood left in the ocean for every victim of Jaws remained the only evidence of their victimization by this unknown monster from the deep.

If monsters are produced as a culture's own repressed "other"-- a traumatic event, that "thing" that continues to haunt it, like the HIV/AIDS epidemic-- then might we describe History itself as a monster, comprised of the traumas that a culture denies, represses, and disavows? That is, in the very production of its (historical) horrors, is the monster not an "other" at all, but the uncanny apparition of History?

What Is a Monster?

Here's an article I found by Ray Loriga, Spanish author of literature and cinema. If you have the time to hear his thoughts on Madrid, I think it's worth the read. Hope you enjoy:

There was a time when Madrid was everything. No more. Between the insulting fascist architecture and the elegant Madrid of the Austrians, between the long line of movie theaters on the Gran Vía and the twisted streets of the center, between the age-old trees of Retiro park and the vast expanse of sky (there's no city with more sky above), between the women selling roses and the white taxis slashed with blood-red lines, there are other dreams of Spain that ain't necessarily so.

When I was a child, Madrid was everything and appeared in all dreams. Now Madrid is also Berlin and Bangkok, New York and Prague, Tokyo and Havana. I've spent a lot of time away from here in recent years, and it's well known that the one who leaves and comes back never comes back to the same place. One man packs the bags and a different one unpacks them. If the person who returns is not the same, then neither is the city. Only those who stay remain alive forever, trapped in old photographs. Those who go, die in some pictures only to live again in others. They die in one city while living in another, and, on returning, they are surprised to find their own remains scattered between their mother's house and the courtyard of a former school. Returning to Madrid now is like returning to a dream you have already dreamed. In between, as I've mentioned, there are other dreams, other lives, other different days.

For one not born in this land, the weight of Spain is impossible to imagine. Spain is dragged like a chain, carried like a wound; it hides and surfaces like absurd shame or pride. Like the name of your own mother. And like the name of your mother, it explains everything and nothing at the same time. It subtracts and adds. Destroys and presses forward. Captains every single victory and every single defeat. Spain is the violent land that mortally wounds and at the same time makes you all but indestructible. A harsh and luminous land where nothing grows easily and where nothing can be easily uprooted.

It's not possible to forget Madrid. In the empty plains of Castile every tree is there to be remembered. This dry land intermingles with the blood of history.

History is the genetic code of nations. The rest is fantasy, or rather lies, but it is precisely the lie that is the proper terrain of art. Individual truth as opposed to collective truth.

The difference between an artist and my grandmother, who is from Jaca (Aragón), is that my grandmother does not doubt what she sees, while the artist does not doubt what he imagines.

I remember that in my first novels I was hardly able to write the name of a street. Everything here seemed painful to me. When I shot my first movie, I sidestepped everything familiar, avoided anything of mine in every shot to such a degree that the entire picture seemed filmed in no place, or in any place. One writes to flee, especially at first, just as one swims to get away from the shore and does not really think of returning until all strength is gone. A swimmer who always returns is a defeated swimmer. Or at least that's what I thought then. Now, as the years pass and more and more my travels take me farther away and for longer periods of time, I realize that one also returns to make peace, to close the old wounds.

Madrid is not Spain, just as New York is not the United States. But like New York, Madrid has the country around it as well as inside it. A person is not only the place where he was born, but he's not entirely any other thing either.

It's impossible to understand Spain without thinking about what it was and what it is, and sometimes even that doesn't help. Old Europe is measured by the weight of history, and beneath that weight the future seems impossible. However, the future is here, everywhere. While the great majority of American cities prolong their adolescence, like old children, European cities have now reinvented themselves almost completely. Madrid is still the city of Galdós and Baroja, but it is also part of a Europe that is disappearing, buried by the tide of unity and development. The Europe that arose out of nothing, like that miraculous Berlin, which thinks it exists from one day to the next like a rabbit pulled out of a hat. Transformed by the dazzling architecture of the new millennium. Constructed by the imagination. Invented.

In part, Madrid is the solemn silence of the Las Ventas bull ring and every one of the Christ figures in every one of its churches, but it is also all the people who travel in the rapid bullet trains. Madrid is my grandmother resting on a metal bench in the middle of an airport as shiny as a carp's back. Madrid is the impossible jungle of the Atocha train station and the noses of single women pressed against the show windows of the monstrous commercial centers. There are at least two cities. One that advances, not always in the right direction, and the other that's always looking over its shoulder. Like those characters in Tati's Playtime who still distrust the embrace of the new but try to adapt to the signs of the times. Two cities that approach each other like a timid child and a cowardly dog. You never know who will end up biting whom.

In Madrid, one meets young fascists and grotesque Internauts, the processions of Holy Week and the drugs of the future, chorizo and anorexia.

The answers offered by technology are and always will be incomplete answers. One can invent everything except the past. We are the central axis of Junger's scissors. Scissors that don't cut. The hinge between yesterday and tomorrow. And that position, as opposed to what is visible, turns us into today. Turns us into nothing.

The tragedy of contemporary Spanish art, as well as its strength, lies in this battle to escape the illustrious shadow of the centuries, dark and brilliant in equal parts. Spain has always been aghast at the vanguard movements, keeping a grasp on tradition like a guardian jealous of past glories. That is why in Spanish art, leaps either do not exist or are mortal leaps. Nothing has ever been gained in this land by peaceful means. Spanish art at the end of the century is still fighting battles that were won decades ago in the rest of the Western world. Here the right to dream different things is not given; it must be taken. And it is almost always taken at the cost of blows.

I've been late in understanding how this country functions, noisy and silent, straitlaced and obscene, passionate and icy. I've had to go far away to be able to reconcile myself to this absurd friend. Spain is a strange and fascinating monster. Now, at last, I believe I understand how this disconcerting machine works. Here nothing is easy and nothing is impossible.

Loriga, Ray. "Images of Spain (That Ain't Necessarily So)." Aperture 155 (Spring 1999): 72-74.

Manuel Fraga Iribarne: Spain's very own Pinochet?

Despite all appearances that would lead one to believe this photo is of a wax figure, the image is a still taken from a recent television interview on Antena 3, depicting one of the oldest ticking fascists from the Franco regime, Manuel Fraga Iribarne.

Yesterday Fraga publicly announced his retirement from political life as president of the Partido Popular in Galicia, a position he held for sixteen years after the democratic transition following the death of Franco in 1975. Interestingly enough Fraga played a significant hand in crafting the bridge from dictatorship to democracy in Spain, largely to assure that he and other Francoist sympathizers would become introduced to democratic participation. In other words, Fraga is largely responsible for ensured a continuity, rather than rupture, between the dictatorship and the new democratic State in Spain-- particuarly, so he and other fascists alike could continue to have a hand in the formation of the constitutional monarchy, a move that ensured him a political career.

And what a career it has been for him. Under the Franco regime Fraga was appointed Minister of Propaganda and Tourism (clearly, the two are related, at least in the fascist imaginary, where selling a neatly packaged image of Spain for tourist consumption stands in line with the marketing image it would need to promote and enforce for the Spanish people). He then served as Spain's ambassador to the United Kingdom, and then after Franco's death became the vice president and Interior Minister. He later formed the political party Alianza Popular, which would later become the Partido Popular, the party of former president and Bush aficionado José María Aznar.

But now, Fraga says, it's time to retire. Retirement comes for Fraga with the perks and benefits of an honorary seat in the Galician Senate, until he chooses to no longer serve in government. I ask: why is no one talking about this--lastly, the media, but first, lawmakers and the judiciary branch? How can the granting of an honorary seat in the Senate be justified by the Constitution of the Xunta, the Galician parliament? Is it not illegal to grant honorary seats in a democracy?

What proves even more frustrating is the article in the on-line version of yesterday's national newspaper El País, which comments on Fraga's retirement to the Senate without mentioning the process by which this is regarded constitutional. For a left-leaning newspaper to not suggest to its readers the means by which a former fascist may find himself a permanent seat in government without an election, I believe, is nothing short of an embarrassment.

And so I'll end this rant with an SAT-style analogy:
Fraga is to Spain as Pinochet is to _______.
(Choose the best fit answer from the options below):
a) Canada
b) Cambodia
c) Chile
d) All of the above

The answer is C. If you need a memory trick to help you get that answer next time, just remember this-- C is for Constitutional Monarchy, which is good enough for him:

Showdown at Sexton's Office. But where was the President?

The image at left: Professor Molly Nolan, on behalf of Faculty Democracy, presents NYU provost David McLaughlin with hundreds of letters in support of NYU grads' right to organize.

Yesterday representatives from GSOC and Faculty Democracy entered Bobst Library, the location of President John Sexton's office, to deliver the letters in support of GSOC, among them the petition (see the previous posting below) initiated by Judith Butler and Frederic Jameson, which now has 4086 signatures. The guards at Bobst Library shut down all the elevators except one, denying the protesters access to Sexton's office and thereby allowing Provost McLaughlin to descend from the tenth floor to meet the strikers and accept the letters on behalf of the absent president.

And as if McLaughlin's expression in this photo weren't enough to convey the level of crisis this issue has caused for NYU administration, Faculty Democracy released an emergency statement yesterday detailing their plan to halt graduate admissions in individual departments, promote awareness of wrongdoing by NYU administration to job applicants, and refuse to honor Sexton's dismissal of grad students who remain on strike. And the letter asks individual professors to cancel their classes entirely and to refuse to report student grades in solidarity with GSOC. Here is their letter:

Call to Faculty

We, members of Faculty Democracy, abhor the recent policy decisions taken by the President and the Provost regarding the penalties for striking Graduate Assistants that are scheduled to go into effect this Monday. Insofar as these decisions also affect academic matters such as evaluation of student work and assignment of teaching responsibilities within departments, they improperly encroach on the domain of faculty governance. If the administration proceeds with these unduly harsh and undemocratic policies, there will be consequences that may include, but are not limited to, the following: withholding grades, implementing a moratorium on the graduate admissions process, and informing prospective candidates for faculty positions, as well as those to whom offers are outstanding, of the administration's persistent violations of faculty rights at NYU.

We call on other faculty members and administrators to join us in pursuing these and other actions. In addition, there is an action you can take that would help prevent the administration from following through on its threats towards graduate assistants.

A section canceled by a faculty member cannot legitimately be held to have failed to meet owing to the absence of a TA or preceptor. We therefore encourage faculty who hold classes with sections taught by TAs to unilaterally cancel all section meetings for lecture courses this week and indeed for the remainder of the semester. Those who choose to do so should be sure to notify all students in class so they do not waste their time by showing up, and their respective Dean's office so administrators do not
engage in needless surveillance work.

We call on other faculty members and administrators to join us in pursuing these and other actions.

Perhaps it's time for John Sexton to show his face?

Support NYU grads!

Here's something you can do right now to support the Grads on strike at NYU:

Sign the online petition initiated by professors Judith Butler, Frederic Jameson, Joan Scott, Gayatri Spivak, Paul Gilroy, Talal Asad, Donna Haraway, Slavoj Zizek, and Etienne Balibar, among others.

You don't have to be faculty to sign. And let's hope tomorrow there are no classes at NYU...

In other news Faculty Democracy has formed a committee to investigate individual threats to grad students, such as deportation for international GAs, blacklisting of grads who strike, and other lovely tactics to coerce grads to end the strike. Here is their letter:

In light of President Sexton's egregious threats of retaliation for striking graduate employees, and in light of numerous accounts of intimidation and threats toward graduate students across the university in recent weeks, a subcommittee of Faculty Democracy has formed to investigate, publicize, and seek redress for any acts of intimidation, coercion, or retaliation against graduate students for their union activities. The members of the committee are Harry Harootunian (History), Alan Sokal (Physics), Jeff Goodwin (Sociology) and Manu Goswami (History).

Most of the threats made by Sexton in his November 28, 2005 letter to graduate assistants would be illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. We believe that New York University should hold itself, at a minimum, to the same standard of conduct required of other employers under the law. We are also deeply concerned by the accounts of intimidation and coercion that graduate students in various departments have reported; we believe that such conduct has no place at a university. If these acts are true, the NYU administration must be held responsible for fostering an environment in which academic freedom is under attack.

Graduate students who have experienced intimidation, coercion,
threats, or retaliation for their union activities should contact the
committee. They will be free to discuss their concerns with us at
whatever level of confidentiality they desire.

To friends and colleagues at NYU-- good luck tomorrow!

NYU: Union Busting 101

Today New York University president John Sexton issued a rather hostile letter to striking graduate student instructors.

If you're not familiar with the situation, NYU grads declared an open-ended strike on Nov. 9, months after the U administration refused to recognize the GSOC grad student union as a collective bargaining unit. Apparently it does not matter to U administration that the GSOC was democratically elected by NYU's grad students to represent them. Nor should we remember that GSOC has represented grad assistants and instructors to negotiate their last contract. Instead of resorting to negotiations with a union, Sexton argues, the grad students should trust the U to have their best interests in mind. But, to whose best interests does Sexton refer? The proposed NYU model of non-union contract bidding--the 'alternative' to the GSOC-- includes no grievance procedure, no arbitration or investigation into wrongdoing by administration, no assurance of equal healthcare benefits, nor a standardized cap of work load and teaching hours for grads. And, as if taken from the advice of a TV commercial, some grad student stipends may vary, even within departments.

Rather unintentionally, John Sexton and NYU administration have caused a much greater stir than they expected, perhaps out of arrogance to have not foreseen any indignation their actions might cause. In protest 240 NYU faculty members have formed an organization, Faculty Democracy, in favor of GSOC as the democratic choice of the grads, an organization that NYU refuses to engage. Then, last week, the American Association of University Professors issued a statement questioning NYU's 'ethically questionable' motives and 'inflammatory tactics' throughout the process. It seems as though it would have been easier for Sexton to renew the contract with GSOC (a union that NYU previously recognized, but not after their contract expired) rather than cause such a rift, a loss of morale, and a growing crisis that extends well beyond the GSOC vs. NYU administration spat.

And so now, after reading Sexton's ultimatum, NYU grads are faced with two options. I believe the letter is worth quoting at length:

So far, those who have been on strike have been able to act out of conscience without experiencing consequences for their actions; [...] those on strike have continued to receive their stipends, they have continued to receive free tuition, and they have continued to receive free health insurance. [...]

For those graduate assistants who resume teaching and other assistantship assignments by Monday, December 5th (or the first class meeting thereafter) at the assigned times and places, and who fulfill all assigned responsibilities for the remainder of the semester, including grading, there will be no consequences. These GAs will be eligible for teaching and other assignments by the department for the spring semester. This amnesty represents a balance between our respect for the principled positions of those choosing to strike and our obligation to undergraduates, who have a right to complete their semester's work and experience no disruption in their courses next semester.

Because we take both responsibilities seriously, graduate assistants who do not resume their duties by December 5 or the first scheduled teaching assignment thereafter while experiencing no consequences for this semester will for the spring semester lose their stipend and their eligibility to teach.

For those graduate assistants who return by December 5th and accept a teaching assignment or the spring, this acceptance comes with the commitment to meet their responsibilities without interruption throughout the spring semester. Absences not approved by the dean will result in suspension from assistantship assignments and loss of stipend for the following two consecutive semesters. Graduating students will be assessed comparably. [...]

For those who will be satisfied with nothing less than a union, I know it will be a disappointment that the University will not recognize GSOC/UAW as the collective bargaining representatives of NYU's graduate assistants.

For All "Intensive" Purposes

So, why this? Why now?

In a short while I will be abroad again, taking the leap from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Madrid, Spain.

With less than six weeks before I head to Madrid I wanted to start a blog as a way of keeping in touch with friends. But don't let the smiley photo deceive you. After receiving some literature from the Rackham Graduate School on the importance that students lead a 'healthy' lifestyle, both mentally and physically, I decided to take up this blog as a sanity break from the hours of dissertation writing to come. So I plan on scraping up what's left in the corners of my attic and disposing of that dustbin in this space.

Yikes, you're thinking. Another self-indulgent blog.
Clearly, the answer is yes.

And so "Shake it off" was given a name, invoking the childhood memory of my youth league soccer coach advising me to shake off the pain from a rather sharp kick to the shin. Not unsimilar to that two hundred pound adolescent jiggling his chops in lieu of applying an ice compress, I plan on shaking off some thoughts here--the good, the fat, and the ugly.