Andrew Ginger

Spanish modernity revisited: revisions of the nineteenth century

This article addresses some recent revisions of nineteenth-century Spain, especially concerning the period before 1868. These years have always been viewed as a formative time in classic Western modernity, with the emergence of liberal revolution, modern nationalism, and accompanying cultural and philosophical movements. In consequence, within the traditions of European thought, this period has frequently been used as a central reference point in the comprehension of any contemporary sense of modernity. That is true both of those seeking to continue and of those trying to break with the formative modern ideas and socioeconomic structures, both sides being destined by the very nature of the debate to take the period seriously. For example, Foucault remarked in his famous essay ‘What is an author?’ (original 1969) that ‘There seems to be an important dividing line between those who believe that they can still locate today’s discontinuities in the historico-transcendental tradition of the nineteenth century, and those who try to free themselves once and for all from that tradition’ (Foucault 1988, p. 200). Even if the latter option is possible, it requires knowing what you are trying to be free from. Oddly, given the acknowledged centrality of the period to our comprehension of the West, and the increasing fashion among Hispanists for thought deriving from reflection upon it, cultural Hispanism in general, and British Hispanism in particular, has taken historically little interest in the matter as regards Spain. There is an historical reason for this: it has been assumed that Spain was backward or overwhelmingly conservative, that its revolutions were abortive and flawed, and that its modernity is thus characterized by a need to break with this key period, a failure to do so, or a combination of the two. Terms such as fracaso, atraso, retraso abound, and are applied to politics, economics, social change, literature, art, philosophy, indeed pretty much everything. Such a view helps maintain as examples of modernity the hegemony of the countries of North-west Europe (Britain, France, Germany and its predecessor states). In short, Spain’s cultural difference is defined by its inferior or largely irrelevant position within the development of modernity, and, by the same token, the cultural

The Qualification of Collective Absolutes and the Individuality of Persons and Events in Mid‐nineteenth‐century Spain

The purpose of this article is to consider several Spanish thinkers and cultural figures of the 1850s who favoured in political thought an emphasis on the individuality of persons, and sometimes of...

CULTURAL MODERNITY AND ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES

Abstract This article presents an Atlantic perspective on the origins of cultural modernism in the mid-nineteenth century, through a consideration of the Argentine Estanislao del Campos poem Fausto and its links and parallels with French culture. The article considers in particular the role of “fresh seeing,” “absorption,” and reflexive self-awareness of the medium on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic perspective calls significantly into question the model of distinct, plural, polycentric modernisms, but equally is at odds with the assertion of transnational commonalities across modernisms. In consequence, the internationalization or transnationalization of cultural modernity in the Atlantic space shatters the generic intellectual patterns that underlie the very theorization of international modernism itself.

The Origins of Atlantic Modernism and the Spanish-Speaking World

This chapter investigates what happens to deep intellectual convictions derived from the north-Atlantic modernists, when the Spanish-speaking Atlantic is integrated into the account of the origins of modernism. In turn, it sets out the hypothesis of an overarching narrative of the origins of Atlantic modernism that integrates the Spanish-speaking world. At the core of the chapter lies a discussion about commonality over a wide geographical area and the extent to which similar but not necessarily identical characteristics in art, literature, and thought throughout the north-west Atlantic and the Spanish-speaking world can be meaningfully connected and traced. The key concern here is with exploring whether and how one can reasonably discern and describe such a commonality. A major issue is the significance and role of demonstrable divergences, that is, contextualised differences in artistic effect in relation to this commonality. Keywords: commonality; geographical area; origins of Atlantic modernism; Spanish-Speaking world

Universal Language and Cultural Translation in Nineteenth-century Photography and Geometry

In the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of photographers produced boldly geometrical images of urban spaces, engineering and buildings, drawing attention to the abstract shapes discerned in what was depicted. Among those were Juan (Jean) Laurent and his collaborators and successors. The images sold by Laurent y Cía (Laurent & Co.) provide a significant example of how such geometrical obsessions could be connected to cultural translation, as we would now term it. Lee Fontanella has argued that Laurent ‘sensed it was his mission to record photographically and to register in an orderly fashion all minutiae, as well as monuments, in the peninsula’. By providing such renderings in a reproducible form, Laurent made a version of those things available to people abroad, in other parts of Spain, and, of course, to those in the locality that was depicted. The geometrical shapes in which the images are cast are a key means through which those things are communicated. The present study argues that geometry is presented as a kind of universal language through which photography can ‘speak’ and attempts a reconstruction of how such a geometrical photographic language might have been thought to operate. In these respects it contributes to the renewed critical interest in the historical notion of photography as a universal language.

Some Cultural Consequences in Spain of the Spanish Invasion of Morocco 1859–60

The Spanish–Moroccan war of 1859–60 was a significant event for Spain, as much in cultural as in political and military terms. It was witnessed and participated in by the writer Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, author of the Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África (1860) initially as a journalist, then as a soldier (1954, pp. 882–1107), and by his fellow writer, Antonio Ros de Olano, one of the leading Spanish officers who composed a short rêverie, Leyendas de África (1860), as he recovered in his tent from the effects of cholera. The Catalan artist Marià Fortuny was dispatched to Morocco by the Diputación de Barcelona, arriving just after the fall of Tetuán, on a commission to glorify Catalan participation in the war in paintings. Though he never finished any of them, not even the Batalla de Tetuán on which he worked for over a decade, it is widely acknowledged that his style changed radically after his trip to Morocco, substantially due to his response to the light, and that this, and his subsequent two visits, as well as his not-unrelated sojourn in Granada were fundamental to his development and in consequence that of Spanish painting (Yxart 1881, p. 49; Carbonell 1999, p. 9, pp. 138–140; González López & Martı́ Ayxelà 1989, pp. 124, 135). (Fortuny also made comparisons between Africa and more still Andalusia, and Portici in Naples where he painted some important late works [González López & Martı́ Ayxelà 1989, pp. 107, 109].) Whilst this essay cannot hope to cover all the issues the Moroccan experience raised, and does not pretend to, I hope at least to sketch out a line of enquiry, even whilst bracketing others. The same may be said of the analysis of Fortuny presented here: it obviously cannot pretend to be a comprehensive account of all the features of his art discussed in this essay. I aim instead to show how the evident importance to the