Spain Interrupted: Examining Spanish Representations of Mass Violence in the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

Situated within contemporary discussions of Hispanism and Iberian Studies, this dissertation explores timely issues such as memory, migration, and the links between violence and democracy in contemporary Spain. More specifically, my dissertation studies Iberian cultural representations of war violence in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s that reflect parallel experiences between the two countries during the twentieth century including dictatorships, civil wars, and their peripheral statuses vis-à-vis Europe. I show how Iberian novelists, journalists, and photographers approach the Balkan atrocity as a symbolic reliving of old Spanish traumas as this war becomes an interruption of a “modern, European” identity built on avoiding the wounds of the past. Through this research I develop a theory of hospitality to show how representations of the Balkan war can be read through the concepts of host and guest, whose interplay interrupts subjectivities in an already established Spanish national framework. Studies of memory and mass violence in Spain tend to restrict their analyses to the framework of the nation-state. In an effort to shift this insular approach, Spain Interrupted employs an innovative comparative paradigm by looking at Spain through the lens of the former Yugoslavia. The interrelatedness of these two national contexts unfolds aspects of memory and mass violence that would otherwise be less perceptible. My comparative approach breaks new ground in the way we understand the interconnectedness of relations in these fields by looking at Spain through the lens of the former Yugoslavia.