La narrativa polifonica de Almudena Grandes y Lucia Etxebarria : trangresión, subjetividad e industria cultural en la España democrática

Abstract

This study examines the works and literary careers of Almudena Grandes and Lucia Etxebarria with the aim of unravelling issues related to the situation of women and women writers in Spain throughout the last two decades. Despite the differences between both authors, a common factor draws together their plurality of visions: they propose transgressive paradigms of identity that would enable a displacement of the invariable otherness of Woman assigned by androcentric systems, without in turn her assuming the dominant position characteristically occupied by Man. On the contrary, I will argue that Grandes and Etxebarria demand that diversity function as the operative framework, thus showing their firm commitment to decentralising paradigms through the constant questioning and incorporation of their margins. Such a revindication of decentralisation will be approached from both an axiological and a sociological perspective. An analysis of their works will reveal how the values inscribed in their literary universes highlight the ambiguous fragility of constructions of identity and gender. Thus, the projections of subjectivities in Etxebarria's works, the ways in which Grandes deals with the female body and gaze, and representations of the mother/daughter dyad provided by both authors question from different perspectives those structures, categories and ideologies related to gender and sexuality inherited from Franco's regime. At the same time, a sociological reflection on the different strategies deployed by Grandes and Etxebarria to develop their literary careers sheds light on the progressive entwining of market and cultural production within the Spanish literary scene over the last twenty years. Undoubtedly, market forces have privileged an almost indispensable visibility by imposing it through pathways susceptible to complicating the challenge that female writers face on inserting themselves in a literary world mainly controlled by a masculine symbolic. Under such circumstances the overt assumption of visibility by Grandes and Etxebarria emerges as a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the symbolic incorporation of female writers within the literary arena is increased; on the other, the process of questioning and resistance to androcentric paradigms effected by both authors becomes vulnerable.