Crisis, State and Novel: Methodologic Approaches

Abstract

In this article we explore the different modalizations of the concept ‘crisis’ in a corpus limited to the novel under the Franco regime (1939-1975) and the transition. The hypothesis that sustains this work is based on the importance of argumentative contents that allow us to think the fictions as logics of meaning (Bange, 1981). We start from the classic concept of ‘historical memory’ to put it in relation to that of ‘crisis’, valuing its significance in the production of programmatic components that account for a political pragmatics of the novel. Thinking the content of the story as logic of meaning also enables a possible way of entry to think about the forms of criticism of the Franco regime and its juridical body, in which the space of non-law constructs the body of crime. This body, as an empty signifier, institutes abject subjects in the postwar period (La familia de Pascual Duarte. Cela, 1942), reified and metonymized in the 60s (Una meditación. Benet, 1969) or hyperbolized in the transition (Patty Diphusa. Almodóvar, 1991 and Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera. Mendicutti, 1982), always in tension with hegemonic paradigms of authority.