[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Critical<\/em> intellectual<\/h2>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
The works of Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n are shot through by his political and ethical ideas. The themes of the role of the critical intellectual, his search for the subject of change or the notion of democracy are central in his essays and literary works. In this section I wanted to show a series of general quotes in which his axiom of changing history and changing life is manifested. It does not seem productive to repeat his ironic descriptions of Sacristan, Guerra, Gonz\u00e1lez, Carrillo, and so many other figures of recent Spanish history.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ link_font=”||||on||||” link_text_color=”#020B11″ animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]On the other hand, it did seem appropriate to me to look at his own role as an intellectual critical of the reality in which he had to live and his scepticism towards everything that had to do with the so-called, at that time, “Real Socialism”. I have also collected some audiovisual sequences in the same line as the selected quotes.[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/5-scaled.jpg” title_text=”5″ _builder_version=”4.22.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”peu_foto” _builder_version=”4.22.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”0.9rem” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
With Felipe Gonz\u00e1lez<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/8.jpg” title_text=”8″ _builder_version=”4.22.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”peu_foto” _builder_version=”4.22.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”0.9rem” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
With Josep Tarradellas, Juan Benet, Anna Sall\u00e9s and Rosa Reyes, in exile.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”seleccio_textos_title” module_class=”seleccio_textos_title” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_color=”#020B11″ header_2_font_size=”4em” custom_margin=”||-21px||false|false” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Selection of texts<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#020B11″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
<\/div>Democratic transition<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\t\t\t\tDemocratic transition<\/i><\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/11-Politica_1-212x300.jpg\")
“We were all retarded, and above all, those of us who had tried to put one word after the other to become tall, rich, and handsome
\nand change Life and History, nonsense not even alerted by the tarnished image that Rimbaud and Marx already had by then. Peter Weiss
\nhad put down in writing the unhappy ending of the testament of modernity. Marat embraced to the point of asphyxia the theological ghost of collective revolution and Sade turned the famous individual revolution into a filthy collection of back numbers of El Caso<\/em>. But we were still young, no doubt younger than we are now, and we speculated in the alcove-catacombs or in the catacomb-alcoves on the sexual revolution and the sex
\nof the revolution, disdainful, although crushed by El Caudillo, who like a stone commander-in-chief witnessed our gasps from his corner
\nan active, who could catch us in his organic nets as soon as our gasps diverged too far from the fundamental of any movement.\u201d (Cr\u00f3nica sentimental de la Transici\u00f3n<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 2010, p. 11).<\/p>\n\u201cIt’s hard to explain to you why there was so little reaction in Spain to the legal murder of Puig Antich, a young anarchist who killed a policeman while they were grappling over a gun. Nor was there any reaction from the opposition. The opposition was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with its coffin leading the way, excellency, and didn’t want to risk territories of liberty that had been de facto recovered, for the death of an anarchist. We weren’t even fazed by the savage decision also to kill a poor stateless Polish fellow, whose death sentence had been put off and which was carried out alongside Puig Antich as a second-rate companion that detracted from the political operation. There were some demonstrations, above all in Barcelona. Extreme left. Christians for socialism. Simply horrified at the killing, but the general staffs of the parties tried to detach themselves from violence, in search of a respectability willing to strike a deal for the future arrival of democracy in Spain. That does not mean that we did not swallow that corpse like a bitter pill and that a lot of verbiage was not necessary to make it digestible. Marcelino Camacho, the leader of Comisiones, upon learning of the brutal sentences against those of the 1001 trial, indirect revenge for the murder of Carrero [Blanco], had declared:
\n“Our convictions are the price for tomorrow’s freedoms.” Someone beside me paraphrased that: \u201cThe execution of that lad by the garrote is proof of the weakness of Franco-ism.\u201d And of ours, I thought. But I probably didn’t say it.\u201d (Autobiograf\u00eda del general Franco<\/em>. Barcelona, Planeta, 1992, p. 620-621)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cAs Lewis Carroll said, words have owners, and the word \u2018communism\u2019 has been appropriated by Stalinism…\u201d (<\/span>Padura<\/span> Fuentes, Leonardo, <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Reivindicaci\u00f3n<\/span> de la <\/span>memoria<\/span>. Interview with Manuel V\u00e1zquez <\/span>Montalb\u00e1n<\/span>\u201d, <\/span>Quimera<\/span> <\/em>106-7<\/span>,<\/span> 1991, p. 48<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cDissidence is a critical mirror and perhaps the Cuban leaders should take a break from reading Gramma [the official newspaper of the Cuban regime] to re-read <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span>.\u201d <\/span>(<\/span>\u00ab<\/span>Disidentes<\/span>\u00bb, <\/span>El Pa\u00eds<\/span><\/em>, 1<\/span> March <\/span>1999<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/11-Politica_2-181x300.jpg\")
Change life, change history:<\/strong> \u201c\u2019Changing life\u2019 (Rimbaud) or \u2018changing history\u2019 (Marx), is a false dilemma. Changing life helps to change history, although historical changes have a greater influence on life changes. Our era has placed this option in the front rank of its preoccupations, because there is a vital appetite for change that has not always run in parallel with evident historical changes.\u201d (Serrat. Madrid: J\u00facar, 1972, p. 46)<\/p>\n\u201cAgnes Heller, a disciple of Luk\u00e1cs, is the first intellectual living in Eastern Europe who, perhaps inspired by the works of Henri Lefebvre in the same direction, tackles the issue of the role of daily life in relation to role of history, linked to life and history through the same personal subject. Lefebvre’s concern, like that of Heller, is generalised in the Marxist culture at the end of the nineteen-sixties, when new cohorts, in view of the historical spectacle provided by what they brought with them from the 20th century, planned the dual challenge of changing History as called for by Marx and changing Life as called for by Rimbaud. Luk\u00e1cs, in the prologue to the work of his disciple, Sociology and Daily Life, advocates breaking down the barrier that moral rigourism, from Kant to the Marxiologues, had set up between ethical activity and daily life and go so far as to connote the specific social being, for so long reduced to a historified abstraction. Manuel Sacrist\u00e1n, in his prologue to Historia and everyday life, also by Heller, stresses that the author’s preoccupation with the everyday comes as a consequence of the disillusionment that, after the collapse of fascism, a new Europe of the left did not appear, and quotes Thomas Mann when he refers to the exhaustion of the \u201cmorally good epoch\u201d in which the collective struggle against nazi dehumanisation gave men [sic] the sense of the community, historical objectives and moral support, in line with the irony that some years later I myself would construct of the disenchantment of the anti-Francoists, with Franco now dead: \u201cContra Franco viv\u00edamos mejor\u201d.\u201d (Pasionaria y los siete enanitos.<\/em> Barcelona, Planeta, 1995, p. 352-353)
\n\u201c\u2026Tete Montoliu on the piano, white jazz for a blind man; Jaime Gil de Biedma talking about Jorge Guill\u00e9n or Harper\u2019s Bazaar, the Pijoaparte groping a specialist in Pijos Aparte and the piano toying with the evidence that neither today nor even tonight, will be the eighth day of the week.<\/strong>\u201d (\u2018Jazz blanco y negro\u2019 (Black and white jazz). i, 25 August 1997)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cI would like to know how to write like Vargas Vila or Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez or Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez to tell all this, because nobody will ever tell it and these people will die when their time comes to die, I don’t know if you may ever have thought about it. To know how to express oneself, to know how to put down on paper what you think and feel is like being able to send messages in a bottle to posterity. Each neighbourhood should have at least one poet and one chronicler so that many years from now, in some special museums, people will be able to relive through memory.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 138-139)<\/p>\n<\/div>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/3.Memoria_5-202x300.jpg\")
\u201cIn part, the crisis of the left worldwide arises from a confusion about the historical subject, which has run its course, the industrial proletariat has been deconstructed as subject.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n\u201cIt’s as if, now, some simians who survived human civilisation would be afraid to remember a dangerous ancestor who dared the excessive gods excessively and through Reason created more monsters than archangels. I take the metaphor, and I stand by it, from one of the best examples of the cinema of science-fiction. Planet of the Apes and Return to the Planet of the Apes]\u2026\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 10)<\/p>\n\u201c…Realising that nor had that been the eighth, the long-awaited eighth day of the week.\u201d (Memoria y deseo: obra po\u00e9tica<\/em> (1963-1990). Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1996, p. 59)<\/p>\n\u201c\u2026Perhaps the weekdays are right and seven is a useless prolongation of eight, of the never-found eighth day of the week.\u201d (Ciudad<\/em>. Madrid: Visor, 1997, p. 42)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cAs long as the division of labour exists, the function of intellectuals is to act as an external consciousness of the established social consciousness, in order to foster the conditions that can convert the need for transformation into mass culture and, therefore, into a critical consciousness. Only in this way will critical consciousness become historical energy of change.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Grijalbo-Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 40)<\/p>\n\u201cThere are no unique truths, not final struggles, but it is still possible to find our way by means of the possible truths against the evident non-truths and struggle against them. One can see part of the truth and not recognise it. But it is impossible to see evil and not recognise it.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios. <\/em>Barcelona:<\/em>\u00a0Critica, 1995, p. 145]<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m a pessimist, an historical pessimist, and I think that this should be sorted out with a revolution, a revolution that by the way is impossible until 2017. (\u2026) Not like the last one, of course, but it has to be done. (\u2026) Perhaps I screwed up just like October 1917 got screwed up a few months later, but there is so much injustice, so much suffering and so much arrogance on the part of the system’s men in suits, [..] I perform an analysis of an ironic left-winger.\u201d (Un polaco en la corte del rey Juan Carlos<\/em>. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1996, p. 178]<\/p>\n\u201cThe neo-liberal cultural offensive in the last 15 years goes against historical memory and utopia. For liberalism, rooting out memory means leaving history without guilty parties, without causes. And by eliminating utopia it leaves the present and the ways things are predetermined as the only option.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00ed<\/em>s, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n<\/div>“We were all retarded, and above all, those of us who had tried to put one word after the other to become tall, rich, and handsome
\nand change Life and History, nonsense not even alerted by the tarnished image that Rimbaud and Marx already had by then. Peter Weiss
\nhad put down in writing the unhappy ending of the testament of modernity. Marat embraced to the point of asphyxia the theological ghost of collective revolution and Sade turned the famous individual revolution into a filthy collection of back numbers of El Caso<\/em>. But we were still young, no doubt younger than we are now, and we speculated in the alcove-catacombs or in the catacomb-alcoves on the sexual revolution and the sex
\nof the revolution, disdainful, although crushed by El Caudillo, who like a stone commander-in-chief witnessed our gasps from his corner
\nan active, who could catch us in his organic nets as soon as our gasps diverged too far from the fundamental of any movement.\u201d (Cr\u00f3nica sentimental de la Transici\u00f3n<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 2010, p. 11).<\/p>\n\u201cIt’s hard to explain to you why there was so little reaction in Spain to the legal murder of Puig Antich, a young anarchist who killed a policeman while they were grappling over a gun. Nor was there any reaction from the opposition. The opposition was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with its coffin leading the way, excellency, and didn’t want to risk territories of liberty that had been de facto recovered, for the death of an anarchist. We weren’t even fazed by the savage decision also to kill a poor stateless Polish fellow, whose death sentence had been put off and which was carried out alongside Puig Antich as a second-rate companion that detracted from the political operation. There were some demonstrations, above all in Barcelona. Extreme left. Christians for socialism. Simply horrified at the killing, but the general staffs of the parties tried to detach themselves from violence, in search of a respectability willing to strike a deal for the future arrival of democracy in Spain. That does not mean that we did not swallow that corpse like a bitter pill and that a lot of verbiage was not necessary to make it digestible. Marcelino Camacho, the leader of Comisiones, upon learning of the brutal sentences against those of the 1001 trial, indirect revenge for the murder of Carrero [Blanco], had declared:
\n“Our convictions are the price for tomorrow’s freedoms.” Someone beside me paraphrased that: \u201cThe execution of that lad by the garrote is proof of the weakness of Franco-ism.\u201d And of ours, I thought. But I probably didn’t say it.\u201d (Autobiograf\u00eda del general Franco<\/em>. Barcelona, Planeta, 1992, p. 620-621)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cAs Lewis Carroll said, words have owners, and the word \u2018communism\u2019 has been appropriated by Stalinism…\u201d (<\/span>Padura<\/span> Fuentes, Leonardo, <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Reivindicaci\u00f3n<\/span> de la <\/span>memoria<\/span>. Interview with Manuel V\u00e1zquez <\/span>Montalb\u00e1n<\/span>\u201d, <\/span>Quimera<\/span> <\/em>106-7<\/span>,<\/span> 1991, p. 48<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cDissidence is a critical mirror and perhaps the Cuban leaders should take a break from reading Gramma [the official newspaper of the Cuban regime] to re-read <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span>.\u201d <\/span>(<\/span>\u00ab<\/span>Disidentes<\/span>\u00bb, <\/span>El Pa\u00eds<\/span><\/em>, 1<\/span> March <\/span>1999<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>Change life, change history:<\/strong> \u201c\u2019Changing life\u2019 (Rimbaud) or \u2018changing history\u2019 (Marx), is a false dilemma. Changing life helps to change history, although historical changes have a greater influence on life changes. Our era has placed this option in the front rank of its preoccupations, because there is a vital appetite for change that has not always run in parallel with evident historical changes.\u201d (Serrat. Madrid: J\u00facar, 1972, p. 46)<\/p>\n\u201cAgnes Heller, a disciple of Luk\u00e1cs, is the first intellectual living in Eastern Europe who, perhaps inspired by the works of Henri Lefebvre in the same direction, tackles the issue of the role of daily life in relation to role of history, linked to life and history through the same personal subject. Lefebvre’s concern, like that of Heller, is generalised in the Marxist culture at the end of the nineteen-sixties, when new cohorts, in view of the historical spectacle provided by what they brought with them from the 20th century, planned the dual challenge of changing History as called for by Marx and changing Life as called for by Rimbaud. Luk\u00e1cs, in the prologue to the work of his disciple, Sociology and Daily Life, advocates breaking down the barrier that moral rigourism, from Kant to the Marxiologues, had set up between ethical activity and daily life and go so far as to connote the specific social being, for so long reduced to a historified abstraction. Manuel Sacrist\u00e1n, in his prologue to Historia and everyday life, also by Heller, stresses that the author’s preoccupation with the everyday comes as a consequence of the disillusionment that, after the collapse of fascism, a new Europe of the left did not appear, and quotes Thomas Mann when he refers to the exhaustion of the \u201cmorally good epoch\u201d in which the collective struggle against nazi dehumanisation gave men [sic] the sense of the community, historical objectives and moral support, in line with the irony that some years later I myself would construct of the disenchantment of the anti-Francoists, with Franco now dead: \u201cContra Franco viv\u00edamos mejor\u201d.\u201d (Pasionaria y los siete enanitos.<\/em> Barcelona, Planeta, 1995, p. 352-353)
\n\u201c\u2026Tete Montoliu on the piano, white jazz for a blind man; Jaime Gil de Biedma talking about Jorge Guill\u00e9n or Harper\u2019s Bazaar, the Pijoaparte groping a specialist in Pijos Aparte and the piano toying with the evidence that neither today nor even tonight, will be the eighth day of the week.<\/strong>\u201d (\u2018Jazz blanco y negro\u2019 (Black and white jazz). i, 25 August 1997)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cI would like to know how to write like Vargas Vila or Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez or Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez to tell all this, because nobody will ever tell it and these people will die when their time comes to die, I don’t know if you may ever have thought about it. To know how to express oneself, to know how to put down on paper what you think and feel is like being able to send messages in a bottle to posterity. Each neighbourhood should have at least one poet and one chronicler so that many years from now, in some special museums, people will be able to relive through memory.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 138-139)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cIn part, the crisis of the left worldwide arises from a confusion about the historical subject, which has run its course, the industrial proletariat has been deconstructed as subject.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n\u201cIt’s as if, now, some simians who survived human civilisation would be afraid to remember a dangerous ancestor who dared the excessive gods excessively and through Reason created more monsters than archangels. I take the metaphor, and I stand by it, from one of the best examples of the cinema of science-fiction. Planet of the Apes and Return to the Planet of the Apes]\u2026\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 10)<\/p>\n\u201c…Realising that nor had that been the eighth, the long-awaited eighth day of the week.\u201d (Memoria y deseo: obra po\u00e9tica<\/em> (1963-1990). Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1996, p. 59)<\/p>\n\u201c\u2026Perhaps the weekdays are right and seven is a useless prolongation of eight, of the never-found eighth day of the week.\u201d (Ciudad<\/em>. Madrid: Visor, 1997, p. 42)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cAs long as the division of labour exists, the function of intellectuals is to act as an external consciousness of the established social consciousness, in order to foster the conditions that can convert the need for transformation into mass culture and, therefore, into a critical consciousness. Only in this way will critical consciousness become historical energy of change.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Grijalbo-Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 40)<\/p>\n\u201cThere are no unique truths, not final struggles, but it is still possible to find our way by means of the possible truths against the evident non-truths and struggle against them. One can see part of the truth and not recognise it. But it is impossible to see evil and not recognise it.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios. <\/em>Barcelona:<\/em>\u00a0Critica, 1995, p. 145]<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m a pessimist, an historical pessimist, and I think that this should be sorted out with a revolution, a revolution that by the way is impossible until 2017. (\u2026) Not like the last one, of course, but it has to be done. (\u2026) Perhaps I screwed up just like October 1917 got screwed up a few months later, but there is so much injustice, so much suffering and so much arrogance on the part of the system’s men in suits, [..] I perform an analysis of an ironic left-winger.\u201d (Un polaco en la corte del rey Juan Carlos<\/em>. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1996, p. 178]<\/p>\n\u201cThe neo-liberal cultural offensive in the last 15 years goes against historical memory and utopia. For liberalism, rooting out memory means leaving history without guilty parties, without causes. And by eliminating utopia it leaves the present and the ways things are predetermined as the only option.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00ed<\/em>s, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||6em||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Contributions<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Audiovisuals<\/h3>Commitment and poetry: \u201cIn\u00fatil escrutar tan alto cielo\u201d in a version sung by Loquillo\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>
- \n\t\t\t\t
\u201cIt’s hard to explain to you why there was so little reaction in Spain to the legal murder of Puig Antich, a young anarchist who killed a policeman while they were grappling over a gun. Nor was there any reaction from the opposition. The opposition was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with its coffin leading the way, excellency, and didn’t want to risk territories of liberty that had been de facto recovered, for the death of an anarchist. We weren’t even fazed by the savage decision also to kill a poor stateless Polish fellow, whose death sentence had been put off and which was carried out alongside Puig Antich as a second-rate companion that detracted from the political operation. There were some demonstrations, above all in Barcelona. Extreme left. Christians for socialism. Simply horrified at the killing, but the general staffs of the parties tried to detach themselves from violence, in search of a respectability willing to strike a deal for the future arrival of democracy in Spain. That does not mean that we did not swallow that corpse like a bitter pill and that a lot of verbiage was not necessary to make it digestible. Marcelino Camacho, the leader of Comisiones, upon learning of the brutal sentences against those of the 1001 trial, indirect revenge for the murder of Carrero [Blanco], had declared: \u201cAs Lewis Carroll said, words have owners, and the word \u2018communism\u2019 has been appropriated by Stalinism…\u201d (<\/span>Padura<\/span> Fuentes, Leonardo, <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Reivindicaci\u00f3n<\/span> de la <\/span>memoria<\/span>. Interview with Manuel V\u00e1zquez <\/span>Montalb\u00e1n<\/span>\u201d, <\/span>Quimera<\/span> <\/em>106-7<\/span>,<\/span> 1991, p. 48<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDissidence is a critical mirror and perhaps the Cuban leaders should take a break from reading Gramma [the official newspaper of the Cuban regime] to re-read <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span>.\u201d <\/span>(<\/span>\u00ab<\/span>Disidentes<\/span>\u00bb, <\/span>El Pa\u00eds<\/span><\/em>, 1<\/span> March <\/span>1999<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cAgnes Heller, a disciple of Luk\u00e1cs, is the first intellectual living in Eastern Europe who, perhaps inspired by the works of Henri Lefebvre in the same direction, tackles the issue of the role of daily life in relation to role of history, linked to life and history through the same personal subject. Lefebvre’s concern, like that of Heller, is generalised in the Marxist culture at the end of the nineteen-sixties, when new cohorts, in view of the historical spectacle provided by what they brought with them from the 20th century, planned the dual challenge of changing History as called for by Marx and changing Life as called for by Rimbaud. Luk\u00e1cs, in the prologue to the work of his disciple, Sociology and Daily Life, advocates breaking down the barrier that moral rigourism, from Kant to the Marxiologues, had set up between ethical activity and daily life and go so far as to connote the specific social being, for so long reduced to a historified abstraction. Manuel Sacrist\u00e1n, in his prologue to Historia and everyday life, also by Heller, stresses that the author’s preoccupation with the everyday comes as a consequence of the disillusionment that, after the collapse of fascism, a new Europe of the left did not appear, and quotes Thomas Mann when he refers to the exhaustion of the \u201cmorally good epoch\u201d in which the collective struggle against nazi dehumanisation gave men [sic] the sense of the community, historical objectives and moral support, in line with the irony that some years later I myself would construct of the disenchantment of the anti-Francoists, with Franco now dead: \u201cContra Franco viv\u00edamos mejor\u201d.\u201d (Pasionaria y los siete enanitos.<\/em> Barcelona, Planeta, 1995, p. 352-353) \u201cI would like to know how to write like Vargas Vila or Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez or Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez to tell all this, because nobody will ever tell it and these people will die when their time comes to die, I don’t know if you may ever have thought about it. To know how to express oneself, to know how to put down on paper what you think and feel is like being able to send messages in a bottle to posterity. Each neighbourhood should have at least one poet and one chronicler so that many years from now, in some special museums, people will be able to relive through memory.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 138-139)<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cIt’s as if, now, some simians who survived human civilisation would be afraid to remember a dangerous ancestor who dared the excessive gods excessively and through Reason created more monsters than archangels. I take the metaphor, and I stand by it, from one of the best examples of the cinema of science-fiction. Planet of the Apes and Return to the Planet of the Apes]\u2026\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 10)<\/p>\n \u201c…Realising that nor had that been the eighth, the long-awaited eighth day of the week.\u201d (Memoria y deseo: obra po\u00e9tica<\/em> (1963-1990). Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1996, p. 59)<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026Perhaps the weekdays are right and seven is a useless prolongation of eight, of the never-found eighth day of the week.\u201d (Ciudad<\/em>. Madrid: Visor, 1997, p. 42)<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cAs long as the division of labour exists, the function of intellectuals is to act as an external consciousness of the established social consciousness, in order to foster the conditions that can convert the need for transformation into mass culture and, therefore, into a critical consciousness. Only in this way will critical consciousness become historical energy of change.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Grijalbo-Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 40)<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no unique truths, not final struggles, but it is still possible to find our way by means of the possible truths against the evident non-truths and struggle against them. One can see part of the truth and not recognise it. But it is impossible to see evil and not recognise it.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios. <\/em>Barcelona:<\/em>\u00a0Critica, 1995, p. 145]<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a pessimist, an historical pessimist, and I think that this should be sorted out with a revolution, a revolution that by the way is impossible until 2017. (\u2026) Not like the last one, of course, but it has to be done. (\u2026) Perhaps I screwed up just like October 1917 got screwed up a few months later, but there is so much injustice, so much suffering and so much arrogance on the part of the system’s men in suits, [..] I perform an analysis of an ironic left-winger.\u201d (Un polaco en la corte del rey Juan Carlos<\/em>. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1996, p. 178]<\/p>\n \u201cThe neo-liberal cultural offensive in the last 15 years goes against historical memory and utopia. For liberalism, rooting out memory means leaving history without guilty parties, without causes. And by eliminating utopia it leaves the present and the ways things are predetermined as the only option.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00ed<\/em>s, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cIt’s hard to explain to you why there was so little reaction in Spain to the legal murder of Puig Antich, a young anarchist who killed a policeman while they were grappling over a gun. Nor was there any reaction from the opposition. The opposition was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with its coffin leading the way, excellency, and didn’t want to risk territories of liberty that had been de facto recovered, for the death of an anarchist. We weren’t even fazed by the savage decision also to kill a poor stateless Polish fellow, whose death sentence had been put off and which was carried out alongside Puig Antich as a second-rate companion that detracted from the political operation. There were some demonstrations, above all in Barcelona. Extreme left. Christians for socialism. Simply horrified at the killing, but the general staffs of the parties tried to detach themselves from violence, in search of a respectability willing to strike a deal for the future arrival of democracy in Spain. That does not mean that we did not swallow that corpse like a bitter pill and that a lot of verbiage was not necessary to make it digestible. Marcelino Camacho, the leader of Comisiones, upon learning of the brutal sentences against those of the 1001 trial, indirect revenge for the murder of Carrero [Blanco], had declared: \u201cAs Lewis Carroll said, words have owners, and the word \u2018communism\u2019 has been appropriated by Stalinism…\u201d (<\/span>Padura<\/span> Fuentes, Leonardo, <\/span>\u201c<\/span>Reivindicaci\u00f3n<\/span> de la <\/span>memoria<\/span>. Interview with Manuel V\u00e1zquez <\/span>Montalb\u00e1n<\/span>\u201d, <\/span>Quimera<\/span> <\/em>106-7<\/span>,<\/span> 1991, p. 48<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDissidence is a critical mirror and perhaps the Cuban leaders should take a break from reading Gramma [the official newspaper of the Cuban regime] to re-read <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span>.\u201d <\/span>(<\/span>\u00ab<\/span>Disidentes<\/span>\u00bb, <\/span>El Pa\u00eds<\/span><\/em>, 1<\/span> March <\/span>1999<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cAgnes Heller, a disciple of Luk\u00e1cs, is the first intellectual living in Eastern Europe who, perhaps inspired by the works of Henri Lefebvre in the same direction, tackles the issue of the role of daily life in relation to role of history, linked to life and history through the same personal subject. Lefebvre’s concern, like that of Heller, is generalised in the Marxist culture at the end of the nineteen-sixties, when new cohorts, in view of the historical spectacle provided by what they brought with them from the 20th century, planned the dual challenge of changing History as called for by Marx and changing Life as called for by Rimbaud. Luk\u00e1cs, in the prologue to the work of his disciple, Sociology and Daily Life, advocates breaking down the barrier that moral rigourism, from Kant to the Marxiologues, had set up between ethical activity and daily life and go so far as to connote the specific social being, for so long reduced to a historified abstraction. Manuel Sacrist\u00e1n, in his prologue to Historia and everyday life, also by Heller, stresses that the author’s preoccupation with the everyday comes as a consequence of the disillusionment that, after the collapse of fascism, a new Europe of the left did not appear, and quotes Thomas Mann when he refers to the exhaustion of the \u201cmorally good epoch\u201d in which the collective struggle against nazi dehumanisation gave men [sic] the sense of the community, historical objectives and moral support, in line with the irony that some years later I myself would construct of the disenchantment of the anti-Francoists, with Franco now dead: \u201cContra Franco viv\u00edamos mejor\u201d.\u201d (Pasionaria y los siete enanitos.<\/em> Barcelona, Planeta, 1995, p. 352-353) \u201cI would like to know how to write like Vargas Vila or Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez or Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez to tell all this, because nobody will ever tell it and these people will die when their time comes to die, I don’t know if you may ever have thought about it. To know how to express oneself, to know how to put down on paper what you think and feel is like being able to send messages in a bottle to posterity. Each neighbourhood should have at least one poet and one chronicler so that many years from now, in some special museums, people will be able to relive through memory.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 138-139)<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cIt’s as if, now, some simians who survived human civilisation would be afraid to remember a dangerous ancestor who dared the excessive gods excessively and through Reason created more monsters than archangels. I take the metaphor, and I stand by it, from one of the best examples of the cinema of science-fiction. Planet of the Apes and Return to the Planet of the Apes]\u2026\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 10)<\/p>\n \u201c…Realising that nor had that been the eighth, the long-awaited eighth day of the week.\u201d (Memoria y deseo: obra po\u00e9tica<\/em> (1963-1990). Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1996, p. 59)<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026Perhaps the weekdays are right and seven is a useless prolongation of eight, of the never-found eighth day of the week.\u201d (Ciudad<\/em>. Madrid: Visor, 1997, p. 42)<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cAs long as the division of labour exists, the function of intellectuals is to act as an external consciousness of the established social consciousness, in order to foster the conditions that can convert the need for transformation into mass culture and, therefore, into a critical consciousness. Only in this way will critical consciousness become historical energy of change.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios<\/em>. Barcelona: Grijalbo-Cr\u00edtica, 1995, p. 40)<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no unique truths, not final struggles, but it is still possible to find our way by means of the possible truths against the evident non-truths and struggle against them. One can see part of the truth and not recognise it. But it is impossible to see evil and not recognise it.\u201d (Panfleto desde el planeta de los simios. <\/em>Barcelona:<\/em>\u00a0Critica, 1995, p. 145]<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a pessimist, an historical pessimist, and I think that this should be sorted out with a revolution, a revolution that by the way is impossible until 2017. (\u2026) Not like the last one, of course, but it has to be done. (\u2026) Perhaps I screwed up just like October 1917 got screwed up a few months later, but there is so much injustice, so much suffering and so much arrogance on the part of the system’s men in suits, [..] I perform an analysis of an ironic left-winger.\u201d (Un polaco en la corte del rey Juan Carlos<\/em>. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1996, p. 178]<\/p>\n \u201cThe neo-liberal cultural offensive in the last 15 years goes against historical memory and utopia. For liberalism, rooting out memory means leaving history without guilty parties, without causes. And by eliminating utopia it leaves the present and the ways things are predetermined as the only option.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00ed<\/em>s, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||6em||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”fade” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Commitment and poetry: \u201cIn\u00fatil escrutar tan alto cielo\u201d in a version sung by Loquillo\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>“We were all retarded, and above all, those of us who had tried to put one word after the other to become tall, rich, and handsome
\nand change Life and History, nonsense not even alerted by the tarnished image that Rimbaud and Marx already had by then. Peter Weiss
\nhad put down in writing the unhappy ending of the testament of modernity. Marat embraced to the point of asphyxia the theological ghost of collective revolution and Sade turned the famous individual revolution into a filthy collection of back numbers of El Caso<\/em>. But we were still young, no doubt younger than we are now, and we speculated in the alcove-catacombs or in the catacomb-alcoves on the sexual revolution and the sex
\nof the revolution, disdainful, although crushed by El Caudillo, who like a stone commander-in-chief witnessed our gasps from his corner
\nan active, who could catch us in his organic nets as soon as our gasps diverged too far from the fundamental of any movement.\u201d (Cr\u00f3nica sentimental de la Transici\u00f3n<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 2010, p. 11).<\/p>\n
\n“Our convictions are the price for tomorrow’s freedoms.” Someone beside me paraphrased that: \u201cThe execution of that lad by the garrote is proof of the weakness of Franco-ism.\u201d And of ours, I thought. But I probably didn’t say it.\u201d (Autobiograf\u00eda del general Franco<\/em>. Barcelona, Planeta, 1992, p. 620-621)<\/p>\n<\/div>Change life, change history:<\/strong> \u201c\u2019Changing life\u2019 (Rimbaud) or \u2018changing history\u2019 (Marx), is a false dilemma. Changing life helps to change history, although historical changes have a greater influence on life changes. Our era has placed this option in the front rank of its preoccupations, because there is a vital appetite for change that has not always run in parallel with evident historical changes.\u201d (Serrat. Madrid: J\u00facar, 1972, p. 46)<\/p>\n
\n\u201c\u2026Tete Montoliu on the piano, white jazz for a blind man; Jaime Gil de Biedma talking about Jorge Guill\u00e9n or Harper\u2019s Bazaar, the Pijoaparte groping a specialist in Pijos Aparte and the piano toying with the evidence that neither today nor even tonight, will be the eighth day of the week.<\/strong>\u201d (\u2018Jazz blanco y negro\u2019 (Black and white jazz). i, 25 August 1997)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cIn part, the crisis of the left worldwide arises from a confusion about the historical subject, which has run its course, the industrial proletariat has been deconstructed as subject.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\n“We were all retarded, and above all, those of us who had tried to put one word after the other to become tall, rich, and handsome
\nand change Life and History, nonsense not even alerted by the tarnished image that Rimbaud and Marx already had by then. Peter Weiss
\nhad put down in writing the unhappy ending of the testament of modernity. Marat embraced to the point of asphyxia the theological ghost of collective revolution and Sade turned the famous individual revolution into a filthy collection of back numbers of El Caso<\/em>. But we were still young, no doubt younger than we are now, and we speculated in the alcove-catacombs or in the catacomb-alcoves on the sexual revolution and the sex
\nof the revolution, disdainful, although crushed by El Caudillo, who like a stone commander-in-chief witnessed our gasps from his corner
\nan active, who could catch us in his organic nets as soon as our gasps diverged too far from the fundamental of any movement.\u201d (Cr\u00f3nica sentimental de la Transici\u00f3n<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 2010, p. 11).<\/p>\n
\n“Our convictions are the price for tomorrow’s freedoms.” Someone beside me paraphrased that: \u201cThe execution of that lad by the garrote is proof of the weakness of Franco-ism.\u201d And of ours, I thought. But I probably didn’t say it.\u201d (Autobiograf\u00eda del general Franco<\/em>. Barcelona, Planeta, 1992, p. 620-621)<\/p>\n<\/div>Change life, change history:<\/strong> \u201c\u2019Changing life\u2019 (Rimbaud) or \u2018changing history\u2019 (Marx), is a false dilemma. Changing life helps to change history, although historical changes have a greater influence on life changes. Our era has placed this option in the front rank of its preoccupations, because there is a vital appetite for change that has not always run in parallel with evident historical changes.\u201d (Serrat. Madrid: J\u00facar, 1972, p. 46)<\/p>\n
\n\u201c\u2026Tete Montoliu on the piano, white jazz for a blind man; Jaime Gil de Biedma talking about Jorge Guill\u00e9n or Harper\u2019s Bazaar, the Pijoaparte groping a specialist in Pijos Aparte and the piano toying with the evidence that neither today nor even tonight, will be the eighth day of the week.<\/strong>\u201d (\u2018Jazz blanco y negro\u2019 (Black and white jazz). i, 25 August 1997)<\/p>\n<\/div>\u201cIn part, the crisis of the left worldwide arises from a confusion about the historical subject, which has run its course, the industrial proletariat has been deconstructed as subject.\u201d (\u201dMarcos, el mestizaje que viene\u201d. El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, 22 February 1999)<\/p>\nContributions<\/h2>\n
Audiovisuals<\/h3>