UC Riverside

In post-dictatorial societies, there is a need to re-imagine the nation and constitute a new experience of citizenship. The traumatic recent past and social conflicts that arise from dictatorial rule may be strategically neutralized to construct a democratic collective identity, which entails a lack of political representation and promotes an idea of democracy based on fear of conflict. Nation-building is an ongoing and dynamic process, but what are the political conditions necessary to inscribe a legacy that resists being identified with the nation?

My dissertation examines the political and social dynamics of nation-building in 21stSpain. Entitled Facies Hippocratica: Transitional Justice, Amnesty, and Denial in Contemporary Spain, my project posits that the contemporary Spanish legal system as a cultural expression of the State perpetuates a politics of oblivion that results in the narrowing and depression of the channels of political representation. My dissertation is broken up into three chapters, each of them consists of two distinct sections. The first shows how the legal system and its conception of citizenry clashes with democratic principles of truth, recognition and justice. Then, in the second section, my work analyzes contemporary grassroots practices of citizenship that resist the hegemonic national narrative: literature, documentary, graffiti, memorials, theatre, and tours to historic sites. I follow an interdisciplinary approach that combines cultural studies, legal studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and critical pedagogies.

These practices of citizenship point at political subjectivities that have been excluded from historical narrations. This way of understanding politics accounts for political expectations of subjects in transformation, for their production of language and especially for the way in which emerging political subjects think of themselves in the process of representing a change in temporality. The practices of resistance I analyze appeal to the invention of new democratic ways of life, to a citizenry that exists beyond prevailing institutions. Amidst the current crisis of political and democratic institutions globally that contributes to the global deterioration of democratic regimes in the 21st century, these issues concerning citizenship, community, and culture across multiple fields are urgent.