Аннотация

Thomas S. Harrington is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut where he teaches courses on 20th and 21st Century Spanish Cultural History, Literature and Film. His areas of research expertise include modern Iberian nationalist movements. Contemporary Catalonia, cultural theory, the epistemologies of Hispanic Studies and the history of migration between the peninsular «periphery» (Catalonia, Galicia, Portugal and the Basque Country) and the societies of the Caribbean and the Southern Cone. In recent years, he has begun, in essays such as those contained in the present volume, to apply the insights gained in the course of his work on the formation of Iberian social identities to the task of unpacking the cultural architecture of nationalist and imperialist discourses in the land of his birth.

Аннотация

Agents of sedition who are heedlessly destroying Spain's «consolidated democracy»? Xenophobes simply interested in protecting their own wealth who are, behind the rhetoric, not that different from the tribal authoritarians coming to the fore in Hungary and northern Italy? These are but two of the many narrative tropes the Spanish government and the establishment press in Europe and the US are rolling out to counter the rise of separatist sentiment in Catalonia. In this book, Thomas S. Harrington, an American with a deep familiarity with Catalan culture and history, argues that, far from being a threat to democracy in Europe, the scrupulously peaceful and people-driven movement for independence in Catalonia is, perhaps, the best hope we have for spurring its much hoped-for renewal.