Abstract:
This thesis examines a range of narratives published between 1975, the end of the Franco dictatorship, and the present day in relation to cultural displacements. Produced by eleven of Catalonia's leading women writers, these texts are written in the local vernacular, Catalan, or the dominant national language, Castilian: the co-official languages of Catalonia since the late 1970s. Some of these authors, although now residing and working in Barcelona, are from Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The majority, however, originates from Catalonia itself. Hence, while the primary sociocultural and political context of this study is Catalonia, the discussion is always framed by the historic entity known as the Paїsos catalans. Under Franco's repressive, centralist regime (1939-1975), not only did the peoples of these peripheral nations lose their political autonomy. Also formally banned were the public use of their language and dialects, and expression of their cultures. Since Franco's death, there have been vast changes throughout Spain, as the country has evolved from dictatorship to democracy, with Catalans especially active in the ensuing processes of regional autonomy. Such factors continue to shape the works by these women writers. This study has two main objectives. The first is to explore through the writings of the selected contemporary authors the complex (re)constructions of Catalan cultural identity since the restitution of regional autonomy in the late 1970s. The second is to elaborate a theory of cultural displacement in relation to this context and the narratives studied. I will thus focus on the displacements that result from sociocultural and political upheavals in the Spanish territories, as well as from the effects of modernisation and globalisation.
Within a framework of contemporary Catalan identity politics, I will draw on theories relating to three broad areas of displacement: temporal and generic displacements, sociolinguistic displacements, and spatial or geographical displacements. The articulation in these narratives of what constitutes multilayered displacements, it will be argued, serves to illuminate the forces of history, culture and power at play in this geopolitical domain. This body of writing also (re)inscribes the presence of Catalan women and their histories, while underscoring and celebrating cultural differences and particularities within the Catalan linguistic area.