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This book brings together recent Spanish fictions and films that point to individualism as the root problem driving diverse circumstances of social, economic, and psychological suffering in the present and recent past. The works privilege sensation, movement, and emotion-rather than identity-as the core elements of existential experience. However, the works also problematize notions of intersubjectivity, confronting ideals of affective immersion and cultural nomadism with the concrete contexts that shape particular lives and social formations. This confrontation underlies a series of 'crossroads', or productive engagements, that guide the book's five main chapters: locally rooted identity and global cultural circuits; historical contexts and universal modes of being; personal authenticity and consumer culture; migration and cultural identity; Spain's historical underdevelopment and impending future crises. All of these issues make affective connection and attachment the greatest existential challenge facing individuals and collectives in the contemporary world, both in Spain and elsewhere.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Spanish Crossroads: Affect and Belonging in the Democratic Era.- 2. No Place Like Home: Gabi Martínez's Ático (Top-floor apartment) and Javier Calvo's "Una belleza rusa" (A Russian beauty).- 3. History and Trauma at the Crossroads: Guillermo del Toro's El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) and Isabel Coixet's The Secret Life of Words.- 4. Synthetic Skins: Mercedes Cebrián's La nueva taxidermia (The new taxidermy) and Pedro Almodóvar's La piel que habito (The Skin I Live in).- 5. Unraveling Cultures: Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful and Najat El Hachmi's L'ultim patriarca (The last patriarch).- 6. Unsheltered: Pablo Berger's Blancanieves and Jesús Carrasco's Intemperie (Out in the Open).
About the author
Jesse Barker is Lecturer of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Aberdeen, UK. This book is the culmination of a research project that has produced numerous conference presentations and panels, as well as articles in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies.
Summary
Offers a broad overview and interpretation of twenty-first century Spanish fiction and film
Weaves together a diverse range of fiction and films and also draws on some of the most significant lines of investigation in the area of contemporary Spanish culture: transnational culture, collaborative cultures in the digital age, spatial and urban analysis, historical memory, gender identities, and the immigration boom
Employs affect theory along with a range of other frameworks for understanding intersubjectivity, such as psychological attachment theory, third wave feminist analysis, and Buddhist Mindfulness concepts
