Abstract
This insight is part of an ongoing, more ambitious research project, and provides a modus legendi of Spanish fascism and radical nationalism, a Warburgian reading of Francoist culture via the monsters it engendered. Concepts drawn from different academic milieus play a central role in such analysis: the intellectual heritage of Jurij Lotman is applied in combination with the significantly extended Warburgian concept of post-life (Nachleben), which results in the conception of political practices of Francoism as surviving political-cultural rituals. It also invites consideration of the “Anti-España” discourse as a Dumézilian “manipulated myth”, conveyed and articulated through surviving images of otherness that give meaning to and consolidate the radical worldview of Spanish fascism.
Every culture begins by dividing the world into ‘its own’ internal space and ‘their’ external space. How this binary division is interpreted depends on the typology of the culture. But the actual division is one of the human cultural universals. Full reference in Zotero Library
The reflections of the literary analyst and semiotician of culture Yurij Lotman seem to acquire greater meaning and unexpected nuances in the context of the Spanish Civil War. As a conflict located within the same national community, the Iberian warfare required the construction of a spectacularised cultural border with clear limits, in which different aspects and hyperbolic surviving archetypes of material-cultural difference—such as a diverse Sprachverwendung, dissimilar notions of masculinity and femininity, varied physical characteristics, references to cannibalistic eating habits—played a central role in the assemblage of a monstrous “other”.
Sometimes the difference and the agonistic competition between two incompatible perceptions of national identity arose from the simplest words. By separating women and men of allegedly diverse characteristics, language revealed not only irreconcilable political differences but also a clear hierarchy, where materiality, lexical repertoires, ways of inhabiting space, and diverse physical qualities characterised a phantasmagorical narrative of disparity. La fiel infantería (The Faithful Infantry, 1943), the award-winning novel of the falangista (Spanish fascist) and volunteer García Serrano, evokes with blatant clarity the essence of this impossible coexistence:
Nosotros somos superiores a los que nos precedieron porque ellos decían diputado, correligionario y descanso y nosotros decimos capitán, camarada y maniobra. Ellos decían estúpido fanatismo y nosotros fe. Ellos ‘yo’, nosotros, ‘nosotros’.
[We are superior to those who preceded us because they said (meaning they used the word) congressman, party member and resting, while we say captain, comrade and manoeuvre. They said stupid fanatism, we call it faith. They used to say ‘I’, we say ‘we’.] My translation.
Far from being merely testimonial or associated solely with literary materials, the remarkable contrast between concepts such as fe (faith) and estúpido fanatismo (stupid fanatism) embodied the radical dichotomy of the putschist political project. It also shaped the paranoid narrative of Francoism, eliminating the possibility of political dissent and paving the way—as language often does—for action, and ‘further crimes to come’ Full reference in Zotero Library. The notion of the Anti-España, the Anti-Spain, articulated the competitive perception of the putschist coalition in a way that is still evident in today’s Spanish political arena.
The narrative of competition during the Spanish Civil War and postwar period was marked by the dramatic Nachleben (post-life) of certain paradigms of alterity. These were spectacularly illustrated in images, visual devices, artworks, and literary and political texts to exemplify the implausible, monstrous character of those who were opposed to the Francoist Weltanschauung (Worldview), either by means of force or simply by their existence as unorthodox individuals. Through this insight and in my ongoing research, I draw upon a specific use of the image of surviving monstra (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library), emphasising that the dramatic contrast between imagined contenders—alleged modern crusaders, viscous creatures of mud and dirt, zackige Männer (sharp, ready, resolute men who oppose curvilineal, soft nemeses, adipose enemies1Han´s interest in the Adipös as a representation of the anti-virtuous can be traced in earlier contexts. In the case of transnational fascism, and specifically in the Spanish case, the allusions to the morbid, soft character of the Anti-Spain reflect the relevance of such lexical repertoires, and are crucial for the rhetorical kern of the self-labelled ‘nacionales’ Full reference in Zotero Library.)—was, in fact, a political constructo made of phantasmagorical, often imported, decontextualised, or simply ‘fake’ remnants (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). These are pure lebensfähige Reste (surviving, operative fragments)2See Huberman’s reflections on Burckhardt’s legacy and Aby Warburg Full reference in Zotero Library.to adopt Jakob Burckhardt’s interpretation of such forms of cultural survival, transcending natural time and returning from different cultural contexts.
Narratives of difference, such as those articulated as Dumezillian ‘manipulated myths’ (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library/Full reference in Zotero Library) fed the putschist imaginaries and shaped the mentale Landkarten (imaginative landscape) of the political cultures of francoism; these narratives were sometimes of Spanish origin but not exclusively so due to the porous nature of culture, which allows interchange, specifically of Feindbildern (images of the enemy) in unexpected political milieus.3I make use of a notion commonly used by Reinhardt Olschanski (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).Their effect allowed not only the articulation of a defined contender but also the legitimation of a modern war in which the pharmakos (the human scapegoat) required no further contextualisation. Linked dramatically with past enemies—such as the Indios (Indigenous Peoples) in colonial descriptions from the Crónicas de Indias—Spain’s adversaries and heroes from 1936–1939 immediately acquired, as Cassirer would say, the magical essence that defied explanation Full reference in Zotero Library/Full reference in Zotero Library. The complexity of a war fought not only to impose a particular political worldview but also to eradicate any form of difference—sexual, intellectual, or class-based, as the rebels aimed to eliminate ‘one-third of the [working class] male population of Spain’4See the statements of the Press Attaché Gonzalo de Aguilera Munro. Quoted in Full reference in Zotero Library.—was rhetorically diluted and artificially transformed into a primitive competition using ancestral concepts. The theatrical opposition of the virile and the viscous, and that of the wet and the dry (aspects I analyse in my forthcoming monograph of the same title, Lo viril y lo Viscoso [The Virile and the Viscous]) simplified the conflict, though only superficially, as it remained fundamentally political through the overuse and misuse of certain cultural rituals.
According to this logic, the competitor of the self-labelled ‘nacionales’ had to embody otherness, linking its unquestionable alterity to earlier, remote models of paradigmatic and undesirable difference. The eleventh-century descriptions of the drevlyans found in Kievan chronicles and studied by Lotman Full reference in Zotero Library and the representations of indigenous populations by Oviedo y Valdés or Díaz del Castillo (1568; Full reference in Zotero Library)5‘Eran los más dellos sométicos, en especial los que vivían en las costas y tierra caliente, en tanta manera, que andaban vestidos en hábito de mujeres muchachos a ganar en aquel diabólico y abominable oficio (…). Pues tener excesos carnales hijos con madres, y hermanos con hermanas, y tíos con sobrinas, halláronse muchos que tenían este vicio desta torpedad’ [The majority of them were sodomites, especially those inhabiting the coast and hot lands. They walked around dressed in women’s clothes (…) sexual encounters between sons and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces; many of them were guilty of such vices]. share certain surviving characteristics, which link these archetypes of alterity to a sort of mitologema Full reference in Zotero Library, a common source that transforms contemporary adversaries into monstrous anathemas. Women and men confronting the Regime were accused of cannibalism,6The descriptions of these pseudo-vampiric figures are a common denominator in francoist novels. For a clear example of the characteristic tone of the literatura tremendista and its monstrous depictions, see Full reference in Zotero Library; further representations of the cannibalistic character of the militia women can be seen in Olanda Spencer Full reference in Zotero Library. depicted as inhabitants of an ‘outer region’ (a locus far away from the cultural space of the “safe”, according to Lotman), portrayed as wet contenders with liminal characteristics (dramatically opposed to the zackige Helden, the so-called rectilinear heroes of Francoism),7In relationship to the overuse of the word zackig in German NS milieus, see the classical work of Full reference in Zotero Library. Other fascist movements—at least Spanish fascism and Vallone Rexism—made use of this systematic contrast between dry/sharp virtue and wet/viscous/soft decadence. Leon Degrelle’s most famous work is a particularly clear example of the similitude between the French-speaking lexical arsenals of fascism and those of Francoism Full reference in Zotero Library. and identified as genuine cultural reapers. They suffered the same fate as that of all sacrificial creatures: the political and cultural salvation of the Francoist “self” was inextricably linked to their extermination. The contentious narrative used to “justify” the cultural holocaust and murder of those who were not able to reach the nationalist “standards” was supported both by literary materials and visual depictions: the visual arts and a significant number of authors that were successfully integrated into a peninsular, cultural Gleichschaltung assembled a visual and literary discourse that matched the organische Wahrheit (a form of Alternative Truth) of Francoist officials and pseudo-scientists. As with many other discourses of monstrosity and difference, the political bestiary of Francoism offered a modus legendi of the Anti-Spain, fundamentally based on remnants and traces. The Francoist myth was a deceptive one, as Girard also described other surviving myths Full reference in Zotero Library.
Despite the obvious differences, a particular phenomenon is present in political discourse, image, and text:8In saying as much, I do not aim to relativise the horrors of Spanish colonial practices. On the contrary, these horrors ought to be linked with the terror campaigns and prosecution practices of post-1936 Spain. political contenders of the Spanish Civil War were de facto transformed into colonial subjects. This process of indianización permitted the repressive practices and visual repertories of Spanish colonialism to be transposed to the Iberian Peninsula. The colonial experience, along with previous conflicts and cultural persecution in northern Africa, proved to be a useful tool in the articulation of political-cultural narratives of alterity. It was strategically advantageous and performed by the same actors: the africanistas (military men linked with the colonial territories in Morocco and veterans of the Rif Wars of the late 1920s) participated substantially in the putsch against the Republic in 1936, and inevitably carried their experience—if we can use such terms—and Feindbilder to the Spanish warfare without resistance. The literary production of the early twenties was rich in descriptions of the colonial “others” that matched the biased perception of the africanistas. These repositories made use of surviving lexical arsenals to describe loyal women and men, emphasising the same characteristics and replicating Lotman’s Drevlyans and Diaz del Castillo’s depictions of the Indians and militia women and men with a myriad of earlier descriptions of difference:
Bailaron, se refregaron los unos con otros, lascivamente. Se burlaron de todo lo que no era suyo: ceremonias, tipos, indumentaria, lenguaje. Maldijeron. La plaza era como un gran lago hirviente, y las calles sus arroyuelos. Un reguero de máscaras desbordó la plaza y, canalizándose por la calle, fue escurriéndose hasta el barrio del zoco. Las gargantas, roncas, proferían gritos ultrahumanos; los hombres se acariciaban; los disfraces parecían cosas muertas. Tenían su tristeza, pegadas, amargadas a los locos que se mofaban de ellas. Full reference in Zotero Library
[They danced, rubbing up against each other lewdly. They mocked everything that was not theirs: ceremonies, types, clothing, language. They cursed. The square was like a great boiling lake, and the streets its rivulets. A stream of masks overflowed the square and, channelling through the streets, trickled into the souk district. The hoarse throats uttered inhuman cries; the men caressed each other; the costumes looked like dead things. They had their sadness, adhering, embittered by those who mocked them.]
The transposition of these Feindbilder did not result from a lack of imagination or political or propagandistic dilettantism. Assimilating contenders and cultural competitors with remnants and imagoes from ancient times guaranteed better assimilation of the francoist hate speech and inevitably linked the Anti-Spain with a broader, complex genealogy of surviving archetypes that perpetually ‘vibrate’—to follow Calasso’s inspiring words—under the cortex of every culture. This reflects Huberman’s asseveration on the Warburgian concept of Nachleben: cultures retain all that is obscure, prosecuted, forbidden, and cursed (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Both cultures and political cultures tend to repeat the same patterns of demonisation, confirming that most of our enemies are, as Dumezil would claim, artificial phantoms returning from a distant past.