Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture

by Christine Henseler, Randolph D. Pope

Overview

Essays in this volume explore the popular cultural effects of rock culture on high literary production in Spain in the 1990s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826515643
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	06/18/2007
Series:	Hispanic Issues
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Christine Henseler is Associate Professor of Spanish at Union College.

Randolph D. Pope is Commonwealth Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia.

Read an Excerpt

Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture

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By Christine Henseler, Randolph D. Pope

Vanderbilt University Press

Copyright © 2007 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8265-9229-3

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CHAPTER 1

A Distopian Culture: The Minimalist Paradigm in the Generation X

Gonzalo Navajas

The Humanist Framework

In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre published a controversial and highly influential work, L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), in which he provides a comprehensive foundation to his philosophical program, which is based on the rejection of universal axiological principles. In the book, he attempts to link his program to the humanist project that has been a central focus of modern thought from Goethe and Voltaire to the present. Sartre does not pretend to restore and save the classical tradition of thought, but he, nonetheless, establishes a connection between the nihilism and solipsism of his philosophy and the history of humanism, which, at least theoretically, posits a common and solidary destiny for all humanity. Without renouncing his negative critical methodology, Sartre inserts his philosophy within the modern paradigm in which the humanist ideal supplies the central justification.

From this perspective, Antoine Roquentin, Sartre's nihilist figure of La nausée (Nausea), would ultimately propose a renovated and more genuine view of the human condition. His critical examination of the philosophical tradition takes on an extraordinary dimension since, after assuming the burden of a past that he considers false and illegitimate, he undertakes the task of exploring new venues that would be exempt from prior metaphysical presuppositions. He thus claims to uncover a freer form of humanism that potentially can provide a more valid path for a self that, in a Nietzschean manner, has overcome the restrictions of the past. For Roquentin, the old version of humanism is dead, but he can still act according to a new version of humanism in which the only framework of reference is absolute freedom without limits: "l'homme, sans aucun appui et sans aucun secours, est condamné à chaque instant à inventer l'homme" (L'existentialisme 38) (Man, without any support and without any assistance, is doomed to invent man at every moment). More than fifty years later, this radical proposal still resonates actively in the foremost critical movements of the end of the twentieth century that derive from the negative hermeneutics of the Sartrian model: deconstruction and postmodernity. In them, negation is an initial phase that eventually leads to the exploration of new forms of ethical and axiological assertion. Thus, these developments make apparent that the humanist horizon, albeit reconfigured and redefined, cannot be excluded from the contemporary philosophical and aesthetic debate.

The Sartrian parallel is useful to frame conceptually significant segments of the current contemporary cultural condition. In particular, it provides a suggestive methodological tool for the analysis of the works of the authors of the so-called Spanish Generation X that produce their works in the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new century. For these authors, the Sartrian dichotomy between old and new humanism is irrelevant. That opposition implies a dialectical exchange between past and present cultural paradigms in which one is bound to prevail over the other. However, for these authors, one component of the dialectical opposition is missing and thus the confrontation cannot take place. As the narrator of Angel Mañas's Ciudad rayada, Carlos, asserts, those who remain concerned with the cultural tradition are "fossils" that lack the conceptual and vital instruments to understand the current cultural situation and adapt creatively to it. Roquentin rejected the conventional humanist project because it relied on values that had become a subterfuge used to mask a strategy of ideological domination, but his rejection was the consequence of a rigorous examination of the cultural tradition. On the other hand, for the narrator of Mañas' novel, that humanist enterprise is not even worthy of consideration since he has never been exposed to it and he lacks the motivation to know it: "A veces, cuando me encuentro con alguno [humanista], tengo la impresión de que vivimos en planetas diferentes, como si nunca hubieran sido como yo ... Siempre he pensado que los fósiles son unos hijosdelagrandísimaputa" (Ciudad rayada 145) (Sometimes, when I run into one of them [humanists], I have the impression that we live in different planets, as if they had never been like me ... I have always thought that those fossils are real big sons of bitches).

In the narrator's language, the "fossils" are attached to a cultural paradigm that is obsolete and does not deserve his attention. Roquentin communicated actively with the icons of the humanist tradition and, at least partially, he could appropriate portions of their work and thought in order to transform them and modify them according to his own conceptual proposals. The cultural unconscious of Roquentin—who in this case functions as Sartre's alter ego—is nourished by a vast repertoire of texts that include, among others, the works of Hegel, Marx, Bergson, and Husserl as well as Flaubert and Proust. He differs from them, but he is aware of their significance in cultural history and, in the case of Marx and Flaubert in particular, he sees in them a seminal inspiration for his own ideas. For Sartre, the conventional systematization and evaluation of western intellectual history is deficient and it needs to be corrected radically. His project is comprehensive since it attempts to replace a disqualified system with new principles that serve as guidelines for a new mode of reinsertion of the existential self within a reconfigured world. The existential negative dialectic involves a complex process of analysis and examination as well as a definition and characterization of the new mode that emerges after that process of epistemological and ethical reconstruction. The negativism of the process is only preliminary since it involves a complete Aufhebung of the cultural past but at the same time it implies an acknowledgment of the necessity of its existence. In fact, that recognition also implies that the Sartrian self, including its most solipsistic expression, Roquentin, cannot exist without its link to the past. The break-up between past and present modes is, therefore, not complete since, in order to exist, the new self depends, in a Hegelian manner, on that which it denies and from which it separates itself.

The relation of the Generation X to the humanist tradition is different. The narrator of Mañas's Historias del Kronen, Carlos, defines it graphically when he refers to "las viejas historias del pasado" (the old stories from the past) and he asserts that "el pasado es siempre aburrido" (Historias 83) (the past is always boring). Unlike Roquentin, Carlos cannot dissect and reject systematically the humanist paradigm because he lacks familiarity with it and he acknowledges its existence only through sporadic allusions without engaging in a dialogue with it. His position, which matches the position of the rest of the authors that comprise his generation, is the consequence of the dissolution of the great paradigms of history that the existentialist, post-Marxist, and deconstructionist epistemologies have brought about. Those schools of thought took a combative stance against what they viewed as delegitimized and obsolete systems. In a different manner, Carlos's generation adopts a passive and noncommittal position towards what they simply see as an accomplished fact that is beyond debate. Sartre's nothingness and Derrida, Althusser, and Balibar's critical unmasking of historical ideologies originate in a confrontation between an isolated self and an overwhelming cultural history and they imply a process of intellectual and personal struggle between contrary positions. For the writers of the Generation X, negation is devoid of all attributes of ethical greatness and it has become a customary and banal Lebensstil that does not need further elaboration.

A self without attachments to history and deprived of ethical expectations is destined to be situated in a time framework that is located strictly in the present, deprived of bonds to the past, and not motivated to project himself or herself toward the future. The characters of the novels of Mañas and Loriga lack a program of action and they move through the streets of big cities such as Madrid without any specific design about their lives. They know that the present replicates the past and that the future will not differ from previous times. They display a self that is deprived of all the traces of history and that has itself as its only point of reference.

That presentness or strict placement of the text in the present time is reflected in the narrative mode of these works in which temporal multidimensionality is absent. In the case of Historias del Kronen, for instance, the text often eliminates the distance between the time of narration and the chronological time of the events that are being narrated and it develops a close overlap between the two, thus minimizing or eliminating the narrator's conscience that in the novel appears as being an empty and flat surface on which nothing seems to leave any imprints. Carlos observes events and situations in a neutral and remote manner without ever making value judgments about them and without establishing connections between those events in the present and others that happened at another time. For him, events certainly take place, but they do not seem to have any ontological or signifying entity and thus they do not remain in his memory. Carlos reveals a thorough amnesia of both time and space that produces an amalgamation of facts and information lacking well-defined structure and direction: "Me levanto y miro el reloj: son las once y veinte. Voy al salón y cojo el teléfono. ¿Sí? Oye, Carlos, que soy yo, Miguel. ¿Te he despertado? ... ¿Llamas tú a Roberto? ... Sí, yo le llamo ... Pues hasta las siete ... Cuelgo el teléfono y me meto otra vez en la cama. Tres horas más tarde me vuelvo a despertar. Abro los ojos y me quedo mirando el techo un buen rato. Luego me masturbo" (49) (I get up and I look at the watch: it is eleven twenty. I go to the living room and I answer the phone. Hello? Listen, Carlos, it is me, Miguel. Did I wake you up? Are you calling Roberto? ... Yes, I call him ... Then until seven ... I hang up the phone and Iget once again into bed. Three hours later I wake up again. I open my eyes and I remain looking at the ceiling for a long while. Then I masturbate). Carlos accurately transcribes the reality around him as if it took place without him apparently contributing to its outcome and as if he and his environment were permanently divorced from each other.

The reductionism of time and the individual conscience is associated with the minimization of the cultural dimension. Carlos does not appear to have a personal history or a consistent biographical trajectory and at the same time he does not seem aware of the repertoire of signs that shape the community in which he functions. Thus, the "weakening of Being," the ontological devaluation that, according to Gianni Vattimo, characterizes the core of the contemporary cultural condition reaches in Mañas a well-defined actualization (Vattimo, 36). Self, narrative voice, time, space, and language have been reduced to their most schematic expression. Furthermore, unlike in other discourses of the negation of the self, in this case, this reduction is viewed as a fatal and unavoidable fact without the subject seemingly expressing its disagreement or protest.

The textual focalization on a devalued and trivialized present does not prevent the emergence of small realms of assertion where the self can find immediate satisfaction of his or her desires. For example, the narrator of Ray Loriga's Tokio ya no nos quiere shares with the narrator of Historias del Kronen a narrow but nonetheless real horizon of expectations. Within these limitations, he is able to create a small but privileged space where he can realize his program of gratification for his senses and his conscience: "Estamos borrachos de sake, rodeados de zapatillas de colores y perfectos cortes de pelo, no se ve el rastro de ninguna religión, sea la que sea, a más de quince calles, nadie dice nada que podamos comprender, las tiendas están abiertas y los bancos están todos cerrados. El cielo debe ser en realidad algo muy parecido a esto" (243) (We are drunk with sake, surrounded by colorful slippers and perfect haircuts, there is not a single trace of a religion of any kind, at a distance of more than fifteen streets, no one says anything that we can understand, the stores are open and the banks are all closed. Heaven must be in fact something very close to this). This diminished version of Eden does not promise access to a heightened state of bliss, but it offers instead a reversal of the values and principles that may be conventionally associated with paradise and personal satisfaction. The elimination of religion, as well as of money and routine human communication may originate, by default, the only possible paradise that this philosophy of limits can offer. The narrator is resigned to the impossibility of affecting the contemporary cultural wasteland and instead he only aspires to carve a small but personal niche within it.

In Héroes, also authored by Loriga, this search for an individualized Eden follows the troubled journey of the leading character after he has forsaken his previous marks of identity and he has rejected as an unacceptable burden the realization of a new configuration of himself. Once again, the scope of this personal Eden is narrowed to a minimal configuration. The protagonist of the novel only searches for a small space where he can listen to his music and where he can attempt to pursue his undefined goals. Unlike that of other travelers, his journey does not lead to a new continent or country in a way that would replicate the conventional path followed by many other travelers or immigrants in the past. His expectations have been drastically reduced and, instead of a new nation and society, he only dreams of the smallest of places: "decidí que lo único que necesitaba era una habitación pequeña donde poder buscar mis propias señales" (15) (I decided that the only thing that I needed was a small room where I could look for my own signs of identity). This "small room" does not even need to correspond to a concrete physical space and may be just a construction of his mind. In fact, the character identifies this room as an essentially shifting and unstable space, a subliminal locus that he visualizes ideally as a song. The immaterial sounds and lyrics of popular music prove to him more reliable than any other possible space. It is not surprising that David Bowie appears as the emblematic icon of this territory, a figure with whom he can identify and that he sees as endowed with redeeming attributes. The utopian dimension reappears tentatively, reconfigured here not according to abstract concepts and terms—like in the twentieth-century versions of utopia—but within the more immediate and accessible realm of rock and roll music: "Si pudiera vivir dentro de una canción para siempre todas mis desgracias serían hermosas" (127) (If I could live inside a song forever all my misfortunes would be beautiful).

The search for an epistemological and ethical Heimat, which has guided the trajectory of central segments of twentieth-century thought from Unamuno and Bloch to Vattimo, Eugeni Trías and Cioran, is reconfigured, in the case of Héroes, as a powerful yearning for a provisional relief from the misfortunes of everyday life (see, for instance, Bloch, Spirit 277; Cioran History 107). The pursuit of the above-mentioned thinkers does not achieve a resolution and it ends typically in indeterminacy and ambiguity. However, the process of the search per se is illuminating and it expands the horizons of the searcher because it uncovers areas of the human conscience that were not known before. The legitimacy of the search is found in the process itself rather than in the final outcome. The narrator of Héroes as well as of the other figures of the Generation X does not aspire to acquire new knowledge, but only to appease an anguished mind that, despite its efforts, is set adrift in a turbulent myriad of signs that elude its understanding and control.

The New Economy of Language

Supported by this view of the self and its position within a diminished world, the novelists of the Generation X generate a new cultural mode that is opposed to the established world of high culture, strictly dominated by the canonical written and literary medium. This new mode can be characterized as a counter-paradigm of minimalist culture and it is constituted by several features that define its nature. The first one is the redefinition of the iconic figures and constitutive signs of classical culture. The rare allusions that are made to that culture occur in a parodic or ironic manner. Ciudad rayada, for instance, engages in a process of defamiliarization with regard to the most central text of Spanish literature, Don Quixote, which is visualized through the eyes of a young man for whom the protagonists of Cervantes's masterpiece are absurd and incom- prehensible. For instance, when referring to the teaching of the book in his class in high school, he says: "aparte de que el que un pavo [Don Quijote] se raye y vea molinos de viento y cosas así no es algo que me parezca fascinante. Pavos así de rayados los hay a patadas. Vamos, y mucho más" (189) (Besides that a weirdo [Don Quixote] becomes mad and sees windmills and things like that it is not something that I find fascinating. Weirdos crazy like that you can find them by the hundreds, I mean, and much more).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture by Christine Henseler, Randolph D. Pope. Copyright © 2007 Vanderbilt University Press. Excerpted by permission of Vanderbilt University Press.
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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Christine Henseler and Randolph Pope Introduction

I. ROCKING THE ACADEMY: GENERATION X NARRATIVES

Gonzalo Navajas A Dystopian Culture. The Minimalist Paradigm in the Generation X

Paul D. Begin The Pistols Strike Again! On the Function of Punk in Peninsular "Generation X" Fiction by Ray Loriga a Benjamín Prado

Cintia Santana What We Talk About When We Talk About Dirty Realism in Spain

II. CAN ANYONE ROCK LIKE WE DO?: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL THEN AND NOW

Samuel Amago Can Anyone Rock Like We Do? Or, How the Gen X Aesthetic Transcends the Age of the Writer

Luis Martín-Cabrera Apocalypses Now: The End of Spanish Literature? Reading Payasos en la Lavadora as Critical Parody

Elizabeth Scarlett Not Your Father's Rock and Roll: Listening to Transitional/Eighties Writers and Generation X

III. HISTORIAS DEL KRONEN ON THE ROCKS

Randolph Pope Between Rock and the Rocking Chair: The Epilogue's Resistance in Historias del Kronen

Matthew J. Marr Realism on the Rocks in the Generational Novel:: "Rummies," Rhythm, and Rebellion in Historias del Kronen & The Sun Also Rises

IV. ROCKING THE ROAD WITH RAY LORIGA Jorge Pérez Reckless Driving: Speed, Mobility, and Transgression in the Spanish "Rock 'n' Road" Novel

Kathryn Everly Television and the Power of Image in Caídos del cielo and La pistola de mi hermano by Ray Loriga.

Christine Henseler Rocking Around Ray Loriga's Héroes: Video Clip Literature and the Televisual Subject

V. THE SOUNDTRACK OF GENDER: VIOLATING VISIONS AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POWER OF ROCK

Nina Molinaro Watching, Wanting, and the Gen X Soundtrack of Gabriela Bustelo's Veo Veo

Linda Gould Levine Saved by Art?: Entrapment and Freedom in Icíar Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos

Luis Martin-Estudillo Afterword

Editorial Reviews

Generation X Rocks serves as a helpful primer on popular culture in Spain and the current group of writers whose work draws the culture to the fore.
—David K. Herzberger, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

From the Publisher