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Becoming: Female Subjectivity, Cultures of Consumption, and
Embodiment in Contemporary Spanish Literature

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Candice L. Bosse

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BECOMING: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY, CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION, AND
EMBODIMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY SPANISH NOVEL
VOLUME I
By

Candice L. Bosse

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Spanish and Portuguese Department

2005

ABSTRACT

BECOMING: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY, CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION, AND
EMBODIMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY SPANISH NOVEL

By
Candice L. Bosse

This investigation examines the novels of three contemporary Spanish female
writers — Silvia Grijalba’s Alivio ra'pido (2002), Gabriela Bustelo’s Veo,veo (1996), and
Lucia Etxebararia’s Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas (1997) - to explore the
relationships between globalization, consumption, and economies of experiences that
produce new meanings and practices of culture, and as a result, yield innovative manners
in which to re-think and re-create female subjectivity. The premise is that Woman, as the
nomadic female subject dislocated within the masculine centered power structure, shifts
and seeks alternative spaces for the process of becoming (or constructing identity) vis-a-
vis her interaction with cultures of consumption. While the three authors maintain distinct
personal narratives, which have informed and served as contingencies in the articulation
of their identity, there exists a commonality among their work. By way of their novels,
each author depicts interconnected vignettes of female subjectivity manifest through
myriad cultures of consumption — technology, dance, drugs, fashion — that transpires in
distinct proxemics: bar, multinational, underground ‘movida’ nightlife, music festivals,
various neighborhoods of Madrid, and the conﬁnes of the home. Through consumption,
the protagonists negotiate female subjectivity based upon a nomadic, molecular journey
of becoming. This process of becoming is hinged on the continuous interrogation of the

hegemonic system and conventional gender roles, intimately linked to maneuverings

through the consumer realm. Each protagonist, through divergent means, constructs her
subjectivity via Speciﬁc accoutrements and questions her identity and that of Woman
within the masculine economy. The mode in which each cultivates subjectivity is distinct;
yet she etches a self who negotiates meaning via the appropriation of goods (tangible and
abstract), associates with ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson), and constructs an active
subjectivity, while transmitting codes legible to the masses. Via consumption, the
protagonists navigate a multiplicity of images and codes in their journey of becoming an
active female subject — an agent with potential to enact change and evolve. Furthermore,
for some of the protagonists, there exists liberatory potential stemming from autonomous
self-creation by way of the consumer realm. In this sense, in accord with Rosi Braidotti
and her theory of the nomad, the protagonists arrive to embody the feminist female
subject who has abandoned longing for salvation. Rather, these women focus on
regeneration either via subversion of the power structure or working within it to their
advantage, evidenced by the dynamic multiplicity of female subjectivity that is

molecular, ﬂuid, and evolving.

Cepyright by
CANDICE L. BOSSE
2005

3950
alga mds que un mimero

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my most profound gratitude to Dr. J osé F. Cohneiro for
his endless guidance throughout my graduate education at Michigan State University.
You are a true mentor; your brilliant comments, insightful observations, and
encouragement have not only made me a better scholar, but also have empowered me to
become an active member of the academic community. Thank you. I would also like to
thank the members of my doctoral committee — Dr. Kristine Byron, Dr. Miguel Cabanas,
Dr. Nancy F. Marino, and Dr. Ellen McCallum — for their continual assistance and
support during the dissertation process. And lastly, Paqui. . .words would do an injustice

to express to you my heart-felt thanks.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I
Introduction

Chapter [1
Critical Framework
Emergent Modes of Femininity
Cultures of Consumption and the Female Subject
Cultures of Consumption: Imagined Communities
and Neotribes

Chapter III
Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas: the Rebel, the Cyborg, and the
Housewife
Cultural Context
Cristina Gaena: From the Multinational to Planeta X-
the Consumption and Embodiment of Counterculture
Rosa Gaena: Techno-colonization, the Cyborg, and
Emotive Harmony
Ana Gaena: Consumption and Embodiment of the
Angel del hogar
Conclusions

Chapter IV
Veo,veo: Consumption and the Dazzling, Diva of Image
Cultural Context
Madonna Re-Incarnate: a New Look a New You
Music, Dance, Drugs, and Female Subjectivity
Now you see me, now you don’t! Re-appropriation of the Gaze
Conclusions

Chapter V
Alivio rdpido: Traversing the Techno Terrain to the Multinational
Cultural Context
Traversing the Techno Terrain: Music, Ritual, and
Commodiﬁcation
Proxemics of Techno and Portraits of Female
Subjectivity
Nomadic Journey to Active-Subj ectivity
Conclusions

Chapter VI
Interconnections

Bibliography

vii

29
30
68

101

115
115

121
150

167
183

186
186
198
210
225
239

242
248
258
284
306
307

319

Chapter I: Introduction

In an era of increasingly accessible and ﬂuid borders, as well as geographical and
cultural mobility, globalization in general, and global consumer culture in particular,
affect and alter the everyday lives of consumers, and in so doing, reﬁ'ame notions of
becoming or identity construction. Globalization may be thought of as an operation (or
series of operations) that embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social
relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental ﬂows and networks of activity,
interaction and power1 (Held and McGrew, etc). In this context, globalization may be
considered the arnplfying, intensifying, and accelerating impact of worldwide
interconnectedness. Global communications media, advances in technology, and the ease
of global travel have reduced the costs and augmented the potential for cross—cultural
connections of all kinds, concurrently boosting the use of electronic media, tourism and
emigration to higher levels. The integration of global economies proceeds in a state of
furious activity, while the exchanges of commodities multiplies, and countries become
increasingly interdependent on each other for basic, as well as luxury, commodities. The
world is in the midst of unprecedented social and cultural changes, as world trade in
consumer goods has inaugurated a new phase of expansion, which does not merely

translate into an exchange of goods. Rather, beneath the activity of these global

 

1 According to the theories of Held, McGrew, et.al, globalization illustrates four stages of evolution. It
involves an expansion of social, political and economic activities that traverse political and and economic
frontiers worldwide. Moreover, globalization identiﬁes with intensiﬁcation evidenced through the
interconnectedness and ﬂuxes of trade, investment, migration, culture, etc. In addition, globalization may
be intimately tied to the acceleration of worldwide interactions and processes, as the development of
worldwide systems of transport and communication augments the velocity of the dissemination of ideas,
goods, information, capital and people. And, furthermore, the growing intensity and rapidity of global
interactions may hint at their signiﬁcant inﬂuence and impact such that the effects of distant affairs may
have profound meaning elsewhere, and likewise, speciﬁc local developments may yield global
consequences. In this vein, the boundaries between local and global become ﬂuid.

economies, more profound and signiﬁcant interactions are occurring, namely in the
conception and construction of identity, as a result of these transformations in cultural
systems.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a Western breach in political and economic ideology
occurred, which eventuated in the emergence of distinct conﬁgurations of identity. This
discontinuity in thought process comprises what is frequently, yet problematically,
termed postmodernism. As indicated in the preﬁx of the concept, postmodernism
subsumes and moves beyond tendencies of modernism, a century old aesthetic movement
grounded in master narratives, ﬁxed identities, and ﬁrm core values. There exists a wide
range of debates as to what postmodernism is. This investigation parts from Ihab
Hassan’s contributions to an inquiry and elaboration of the term: indeterminacy and
immanencez. He declares: “The play of indeterminacy and irnmanence is crucial to the
episteme of postmodernism” (qtd. Bertens 44). The slippery notion of postmodernism,
then, denotes eclecticism, hybridization, and the absence of grand narratives. Moreover,
the dissolution of unilateral history eroded due to rivaling perceptions of culture and
tradition. These expressions of difference reﬂected in the mutation of culture are
illustrated by way of the re-contextualization and hybridization of styles. Concurrently,
distinctions between high and low culture had conﬂated, resulting in innovative
combinations. According to Jameson, manifest in postmodernism is the “effacement. . .of
the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or
commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms,

categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the

 

2 Hassan deﬁnes immanence as “the capacity of mind to generalize itself in the world, to act upon both self
and world, and so to become more and more, immediately, its own environment”. (qtd Bertens 44)

dialogues of the modern” (2). As opposed to modernism, postmodernism is curious of
and enchanted by forms of art that manifest in everyday life. From Andy Warhol to
Reader ’3 Digest and kitsch, “materials they no longer simply ‘quote’, as a Joyce or a
Mahler might have done, but incorporate in their very substance” (3).

The shift in tendencies that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century,
indeed, made itself visible with respect to aesthetics. Nevertheless, this transformation in
cultural processes (as manifest in art) should be considered a reﬂection of the movements
occurring in the economic and political scope. During the decade of the 1950s, numerous
changes were set into motion by the arrival of “postindustrial society” (Daniel Bell), a
term making reference to a society of consumerism, constantly in evolution due to
advancements in technological media. The structure of the “postindustrial society”, their
political ideologies and economic motives, was not in accord with traditional capitalism.
As Jameson contends, “. . .the new social formation in question no longer obeys the laws
of classical capitalism, namely, the primacy of industrial production and the
omnipresence of class struggle” (3). The Marxist model of capitalism centered on the
production and struggle of the subject; the ideologies and practices of “postindustrial”
society ruptured and rendered void Marx’s unilateral focus in capitalism. Karl Marx
pondered the system of traditional capitalism, deconstructing its components and
demonstrating how the exchange of goods evolved throughout history. His analysis
elaborated upon the transformations that have transpired within the past centuries, the
focus being the transition from a barter system to capitalism. The investigation highlights
that within capitalism the production of commodity is primordial. Moreover, he argued

this system exploits the subject and renders the laborer raw material, as the proﬁt gained

in capitalism is value supplied by the worker, yet not remunerated.

Perhaps anticipating the emergence of a globalized, multinational economy,
Ernest Mandel in Late Capitalism, centers on economic developments that have made
possible the acceleration in accumulation. In speciﬁc, he elaborates upon the reduction
of turnover time of ﬁxed capital, the increase in the rate of surplus value, the entry of
capital into service and circulation industries, and economic programming so as “to
bridge over, at least partially, the contradiction between the anarchy of capitalist
production inherent in the private ownership of the means of production and the growing
objective pressure to plan amortization and investments” (Mandel 231). Hence, late
capitalism points toward universal industrialization that saturates aspects of daily life.
According to Mandel: “for the ﬁrst time in history. Mechanization, standardization,
overspecialization and parcellization of labor which in the past determined only the realm
of commodity production in actual industry, now penetrate into all sectors of social life”.
(387) The proliferation and absorption of industrial diversity, and hence, competition
placed emphasis on the creation of manners in which to sustain and augment capital.
Expounding on an apropros circumstance to elucidate the centrality of capitalism in
everyday existence, he states: “The ‘proﬁtability’ of universities, music academies and
museums starts to be calculated in the same way as that of brick works or screw
factories”. (3 87) According to Mandel, the “long-term protection and expanded
reproduction” (231) of capital was facilitated through ﬁnance capital, a liquid medium
that represents wealth. The creation of money through credit stood out as an important
stable source of value that induced additional production, demand, and surplus value. As

Mandel states, the accessibility and growth of credit potentially may incite economic

ﬂourishing “up to the point beyond which it risks jeopardizing the share of the world
market controlled by the country in question” (45 5). Moreover, the “long-term
diminution of the industrial reserve army, which was the corollary of the substantial
growth in the accumulation of capital, enabled the working class periodically to chip
away at the rate of surplus-value somewhat” (457). Thus, the spread of capital sustained
and empowered by credit forged new relationships among countries due to the ever-
expanding world market economy. This notion recalls J arneson’s theory in The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism; he contends postmodernity and globalization are interwoven by
the rise and expansion of capitalism. That is, shifts in cultural aesthetics as well as its
commodiﬁcation did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, these changes are steeped in
alterations of economic and political systems. While production remains an important
aspect to late capitalism, its primary focus shifts to consumption. Likewise, the spatial
dissemination of the capitalist system permits a conjoining among the global and local
through consumption. The assimilation of the global into the local may further provide
for the production of innovative expression (identity, art, politics, etc.), hybridization, and
new cultures.

The proliferation of globalization has created profound cultural, economic, and
political changes, transpiring from the level of the individual to the collectivity;
engagement and identity are articulated through various economies of consumption. Of
particular signiﬁcance is the inquiry into ties, via effects of globalization, which bind
identity and create various cultures. These cultures or groups are based not upon
traditional criteria of geo-political borders and bloodline, but rather are ‘imagined

communities’ (Anderson) formed by consumption of a similar good or experience. It

would be insightful and revealing to investigate the manner in which these dynamics
have altered the conception of identity in countries around the globe. This investigation
centers on the particular case of Spain, a fruitful locus to embark upon this quest
considering the vast and radical changes that have materialized in the past three decades
on a myriad of planes. The power and dynamism of the institutions that previously
served to mobilize collective power and identity (Franco’s ideology and Catholic
doctrines) deteriorated with the gradual absorption of consumerism into Spanish society.
Following the collapse of Franco’s dictatorship, capitalism has become more pervasive in
Spain, consumption has risen, and individual and social identity has been questioned and
subsequently transformed in accord with these changes.

The object of this research is to examine the concept of becoming woman,
accomplished through an examination of how relationships between globalization,
consumption and economies of experience produce new understandings and practices of
culture, and as result new ways of becoming or constructing identity. Although the focus
of this investigation is the relationship between consumption and female subjectivity, it
must be noted that consumption and economies of experience, indeed, conﬁgure and
construct masculine identity as well. The massive global ﬂows of people, capital
products, texts, images and signs create new premises for the concept of culture in the
contemporary world. A main argument that this inquiry presents is that the concept of
consumption is crucial to an understanding of culture and individual identity in global
mass societies. As Twitchell afﬁrms, aﬁer nourishing and clothing the self, “needs are
cultura ”. (11) Therefore, consumption can be seen as a basic condition of life and a way

of being in the world that stresses the emotional and sensational characteristics and social

dimensions of perceiving and experiencing life; it offers new ways of imagining the self.
The argument is that these aspects very often are neglected in the discussion of cultural
studies and globalization; however, they play a central role in the reconﬁguration of
culture and identity, yielding new global cultures and communities through the sensual,
imaginative and virtual consumption of products, locales, and narratives. The meaning of
consumable goods is in large part open to interpretation. The consumer extracts a special
meaning from a speciﬁc good, assembling a montage of elements such as sounds and
images to construct subjectivity. Therefore, one cannot state that a particular brand or
product retains a universal meaning, as meaning is not inherent in the good itself. Rather,
there exists fragmentation among the lived social realities of consumers. This
acknowledgement places at the forefront the plurality of the individual and the resulting
diversity in her interpretation and re-appropriation of meaning. As Frank contends:
Consumerism is no longer about ‘conformity’ but about ‘difference’.
Advertising teaches not in the ways of puritanical self-denial (a bizarre
notion on the face of it), but in the orgiastic, never ending self-ﬁrlﬁllment.
It counsels not rigid adherence to the tastes of the herd but vigilant and
constantly updated individualism. We consume not to ﬁt in, but to prove,
on the surface at least, that we are rock ‘n’ roll rebels, each one of us as
rule breaking and hierarchy defying as our heroes of the ‘605. . .This
imperative of endless difference is today the genius at the heart of
American capitalism, and eternal ﬂeeing from ‘sameness’ that satiates our
thirst for the New with such achievements of civilization as the inﬁnite

brands of identical cola, the myriad color and irrepressible variety of the

cigarette rack. (34)
As Frank posits, contemporary society deﬁnes itself not so much by what it produces, but
rather what it consumes. This tendency roots itself in the proliﬁc globalization of various
economies, which subsequently become assimilated into the local culture, yielding
hybridization. By virtue of consumerism, unimagined possibilities for the assemblage
and re-assemblage of identity may emanate. The consumer manufactures and constructs
herself through a conjugation of tangible and abstract goods. In doing so, the consumer
not only interprets and re-appropriates meaning, but also composes a subjectivity through
election and individual energy. Nevertheless, as consumption remains a slippery concept
rife with paradoxes, it is worth pondering if subjectivity formation through cultures of
consumption may represent a new form of freedom, albeit temporally. According to
Foucault (1988), society not only must select a selﬂrood, but also must comprise itself as
a self who makes selections. Consequently, all facets of existence are examined as
potential means or tool in the negotiation and fabrication of the self. That is, subject
formation manifests by way of the architecture (selection and appropriation) of the
individual.

Having said this, an investigation of consumption practices and how they
transpire in identity formation is complex and contradictory. Due to this quagmire, it is
important to give space to a cautionary consideration of the complexities of the concept
as well as the divisive theories regarding consumption and liberation. As explained
earlier, the act of consumption is not passive, but rather involves the active negotiation
and articulation of meaning in the constitution of subjectivity. However, it would be

naive and essentialist to perceive consumption as a universally empowering experience.

Indeed, consumption practices may yield contradictory realities and an unhealthy, inert
selﬂrood; however, these negatives should not be unilaterally attributed to consumption,
but rather the manner in which the individual assumes the good.

There exists a host of critics that attack and demonize consumption. The
foundations of the arguments against consumption are primarily centered on two issues.
On the one hand, the subject is viewed as victim of the manipulative machinations of
capitalism, and on the other, ﬂoating in a vacuous state bombarded by spectacle, the
subject remains a passive pawn of hegemonic processes. For instance, Sklair contends
that consumerism remains at the nucleus of the global capitalist project, and as such,
consumers are coerced into a perpetual cycle of satisfying desires that have been
indoctrinated by capitalism. Sklair believes that the project of capitalism serves to
persuade society to interminably consume:

...not simply to satisfy their biological and other modest needs, but in
response to artiﬁcially created desires in order to perpetuate the
accumulation of capital for private proﬁt, in other words to ensure that the
global capitalist system goes on forever. The culture ideology of
consumerism proclaims, literally, that the meaning of life is to be found in
the things that we possess. To consume, therefore, is to be fully alive, and
to remain fully alive we must continuously consume, discard, consume.
The notions of men and women as economic or political beings are
marginalized by global capitalism, quite logically, as the system does not
even pretend to satisfy everyone in the economic or political spheres.

Men, women, children, even pets, are consumers. The point of economic

activity for ordinary members of the system is simply to provide the
resources to be consumers, and the point of political activity is to ensure,
usually through political inactivity, that the conditions for consuming are
maintained. This system has been evolving for centuries, ﬁrst for
aristocracies and members of the bourgeoisie all over the world, then
spreading to the working classes in the First world, and slowly but surely
penetrating to all those with disposable income everywhere. (62)
Following Sklair’s line of argumentation, Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen contend that implicit
to consumerism is the never-ending quest to fulﬁll false desires, which ultimately results
in failure. They state:
Alongside the considerable achievements of industrial development, the
logic of consumption has become increasingly universal in our way of life.
It is embroiled in our intimacies; tattooed in our hopes; demanding of our
energies. The "constant rapidity" with which we are encouraged to tire of
consumable objects, of our elusive pleasures, is generalized as an axiom
for existence. To buy is to succeed. Soon, this success becomes failure.
(75)
Explicit to the condemnation of consumerism, the subject as consumer is a universal
victim. Controlled by the powers of capitalism, the subject continuously quests to satisfy
artiﬁcial wants and needs indoctrinated by the capitalist project. The result of this line of
argumentation is the utter failure on the part of the subject to think and act for herself. In
accord with this notion, binary oppositions may never be erased, and furthermore, the

subject may never be ‘free’ in the formation process.

10

Consumption, indeed, is a profound intricate process. As such, this investigation
does give space to the dangers of consumption and contradictory realities that emerge and
result in the construction of an unhealthy subjectivity. Nevertheless, this research
proposes that cultures of consumption may exemplify an active and dynamic means for
becoming or the construction of subjectivity from which arise the possibility for
innovative and personal afﬁnities with the self and the collectivity.

Commercialism is more a mirror than a lamp. That we demonize it, that
we see ourselves as helpless and innocent victims of its overpowering
force, that it has become scapegoat du jour, tells far more about our
eagerness to be passive in the face of complexity than about our
understanding of how it does its work. . .The material world magnetizes us
and we focus much energy on our relationship with it. (Twitchell 20-21)
Consumption is a continuous negotiation, a never-ending dialogue between the consumer
and the material world. Not limited to the material realm, one may also consume
experiences, memories, and the gaze. Of importance is how the consumer appropriates
and negotiates the item, which results in the production of meaning. As such, consumers
are not necessarily passive. “Consumers are just another interpretive community. They
are readers. For them, consumers goods should be considered as ‘polysemous cultural
resources’ that can be interpreted in a variety of ways by different groups of consumers”.
(Twitchell 46-47) While the principle of consumerism may have origins in the
nineteenth century only to garner its full momentum in the middle of the twentieth

century, it is not a new concept3. In previous centuries meaning was generated through

 

3 Consumption played an integral role in the structure and dynamics of the Roman Catholic Church
exempliﬁed by the bacchnallic profusions of the carnivalistic rituals such as Mardi Gras and Lent. The

11

rigid social conventions such as the intangible concept of social caste, however, with the
advent of capitalism and consumerism, the construction of identity shifted. No longer
revolving around birth and family origin, it converted to revolve around our interaction
with a constellation of goods - whether tangible or abstract — and how we consume and
appropriate those items. Consumerism is seen as a creative activity by which we form
our identities. It should not merely be seen as successﬁrl manipulation by capitalism, but
rather as a more positive potential site of individual agency. Storey contends that the
proliferation of consumer society signals the innovative manners in which individuals
negotiate and appropriate identity, rather than the power of capitalism to create and
indoctrinate desire for goods. Storey afﬁrms, “. . .using cultural consumption to articulate
multiple and mobile identities has a history... but this is not the same as saying that it is
something that capitalist entrepreneurs have imposed on an easily manipulated body of
consumers” (147-8). According to Storey’s analysis, consumers are not manipulated, but
rather in some sense negotiate their participation within consumer culture.

Within Spain this investigation is of particular signiﬁcance as evidenced in a
recent worldwide survey of social values and changes undertaken by Ronald Inglehart".
According to the results of the research, Ingelhart afﬁrms:

Ni previsibles ni cacticos, pero si “muy fuertes”. Asi deﬁnen los
cientiﬁcos sociales los cambios politicos y de mentalidad producidos en

Espafta en los r’rltimos aﬁos del siglo pasado y primeros del actual. En

 

cycle was initiated by consumption of goods, a celebration of indulgence, and then stringent denial
followed. Paradoxically, the community still consumed, if not of material goods then rhetoric and
discourse.

’ Ronald Inglehart, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, spearheaded a survey of
eighty-one countries, interviewing 200,000 people between 1999-2001 with the purpose of measuring and
comparing social values.

12

ningr’rn otro pats las diferencias y cortes generacionales fueron tan
radicales en materias como la religién 0 las conductas sexuales. . .La
encuesta mundial de valores. . .dibuja una sociedad espaflola secularizada y
tolerante, muy por encima de la media mundial. (Bedoya, El Pais 6/30/04)
Not only does this survey signal the massive transformations, on a political level as well
as a psychological one, that have occurred within the contemporary Spanish society
within the last decade, but it also hints at something more profound. Implied in the
results of Inglehart’s study is the shift from a society steeped in materialist values, one
that placed emphasis on securing basic economic needs, to one delving into
postrnaterialism, in which importance is bestowed to freedom of election and self
expression. Inglehart ‘s investigation ultimates:
La primera conclusiOn del monumental inforrne sobre la sociedad actual es
que todo resulta ‘previsible’ y que rara vez las cosas se vuelven ‘caOticas’.
Mas: lo que ahora se sabe preguntandole a la gente en todo el mundo ya
lo intuyeron cientiﬁcos sociales como Carlos Marx (1818-1883) 0 Max
Weber (1864-1920). Es decir, que una vez alcanzados ‘niveles adecuados’
de desarrollo se registra en las sociedades un paso desde los valores
materialistas (que ponen e1 énfasis en la seguridad ﬁsica y econérnica),
hacia valores postrnaterialistas que se ﬁjan sobre todo en la libertad de
elecciOn 0 de expresién. (Bedoya, El Pais 6/30/04)
Taking into consideration the conclusions of Inglehart’s research, this study looks into
consumption practices ﬁ'om a perspective that seeks to cover an array of issues such as

subjectivity formation, embodiment, and liberatory potential. By way of analysis of the

13

literary production of contemporary Spanish women authors, this investigation delves
into the slippery relationships that are forged between consumption and identity
construction to illustrate a plethora of modes of becoming via the consumption of
tangible and intangible goodss.

The novels of the contemporary Spanish women writers who will be the object of
study -— Lucia Etxebarria, Gabriela Bustelo, and Silvia Grij alba - provide a fertile ground
to examine culture and identity vis-a-vis consumption practices during postmodern times
as it has only been two and half decades since the fall of the dictatorship. As such, this
corpus of female authors represent the ﬁrst generation of women writers born into the
regime of Francoism yet spent their formative years — that is, their youth- in transition
between two opposing worlds. Their passage from one state (dictatorship) to another
(democracy) infuses their writing with transnational dimensions as they portray culture
and female identity as products of a globally integrated economy. The perspectives
offered through the narratives give us a measure of cultural, political, and social change
in Spanish society mediated by the world of commodities. Of interest, all of these
authors have a close relation to Madrid, the social, economic, and political center of the
country. Nevertheless, these cultural shifts are not only particular to the nucleus, but
rather they are occurring outside of the capital evidenced from novels written by other

contemporary Spanish women authors. Examples range from Anna Garcia’s Los

 

5 It is important to reiterate that the practice of identity formation vis-a-vis consumption choices is not
exclusive to women. The contemporary Spanish writer Ray Loriga’s novel Héroes (1993) evidences the
relationship among cultures of consumption and masculine subjectivity. Moreover, there have been
numerous studies that have treated male consumption and identity formation such as the article written by
Gregson and Crewe, “Beyond the High Street and the Mall - Car Boot Fairs and the New Geographies of
Consumption in the 19903’”. Furthermore, as evidenced by Stella’s article “’Rebels without a cause': Male
Youth in Italy around 1960”, there has existed and continues to manifest an intimate relationship between
consumption practices for both genders in the fornation of becoming, or identity construction.

14

placeres de Anastasia (2004), which takes places in a small town outside of Barcelona, to
the novels written by Coloma Fernandez Armero, Mil dolores pequeﬁos (2002) and
Querida yo (2000), which traverse foreign destinations such as New York and London, as
well as the periphery of Spain: Ahneria, Tarifa, Cadiz, and Menorca, to mention a few.
Hence, through exposure to advertising and the media and communications industry,
populations around the globe are becoming connected, as these global technologies
permit the rapid dissemination of visual and aural information. The globalization of
cultures is tied to momentous political changes of the present era such as the rise of
identity politics and transnational politics (the interconnection of economic markets and
political alliances). The engagement of these dynamics at the individual and collective
levels creates new-fashioned cultural forces and innovative forms of autonomous self-
governance.

These particular authors were selected for the investigation because they explore
and navigate themes such as cultures of consumption and economies of experiences,
dialoguing with the international, while questioning representations of female subjectivity
within Spain6. The novels of Etxebarria, Bustelo, and Grij alba — albeit in distinct
manners - may portray the effects and reverberations that the globalization of cultures has
had on contemporary Spanish society, in particular the mode in which female subjectivity
is intimately linked to consumption practices. Furthermore, these women writers, by way
of the creation of their own narratives, demonstrate “the process of becoming woman”

(Braidotti) buttressed by various contingencies. Their narratives illustrate the potential

 

f’I'he novels of mainstream authors such as Rosa Montero and Almudena Grandes bear similarity to the
novels under discussion as this corpus of female writers interrogate the reprentation of female subjectivity
within Spain. Nevertheless, the novels of Etxebarria, Grijalba, and Bustelo delve into myriad consumption
practices and their relationship to the formation of female subjectivity as well as imagined communities
(Anderson) that arise due to multiple shared afﬁnities.

15

for agency accessible to women through economies of consumption, as via this outlet
each individual is able to negotiate and articulate her subjectivity, conscious of this self-
creation. The writers’ novels examine the authority given to women through the
popularization of cultures of consumption, as each woman has the power to present her
identity as she conceives it, despite the preconceptions of Spanish society at large. This
self-govemance rooted in the sphere of consumption, which manifests in the various
protagonists, recalls Braidotti’s notion of the nomad, essential to the “process of
becoming woman”. Braidotti contends:
Como una ﬁguracién de la subj etividad contemporanea, e1 nOmade es pues
una entidad posmetaﬁsica, intensiva, mr'rltiple, que se desenvuelve en una
red de interconexiones. El/la nOmade no puede reducirse a una for'ma
lineal, teleolégica, de subj etividad sino que mas bien constituye el sitio de
conexiones multiples. Esta corporizado/a, y por ello es cultural; como
artefacto, es un componente tecnolégico de lo humano y posthumano; es
un complejo dotado de capacidades multiples para la interconectividad en
el modo impersonal. El/la nOmade es un cyborg de Haraway, pero que
cuenta ademas con un inconsciente. ES 10 “mucoso” o “divino” de Irigary,
pero dotado de perspectiva multicultural. Es abstracto/a y perfecta,
operativamente real. (Sujetos némades 78)
In light of this, I analyze the novels of these contemporary Spanish women authors
focusing on the various cultures of consumption —drugs, music, fashion, sex, dancing,
and technology— that each protagonist embraces and also explore the resulting

embodiment of the feminist subject.

16

This investigation examines becoming through the optic of diverse cultures of
consumption. Invariably citizens and consumers are engaged with commodities and are
shaping them for their own purposes. It is through this process that one also produces
identity by way of various economies. Through cultures of consumption, one produces
selfhood while concurrently aligning the self with communities or groups who share
these commonalities. As will be evidenced in the discussion of the novels, whether
constructing an image in opposition to consumer culture —- one of militancy — or
embracing it wholeheartedly through purchasing elaborate markers of upper-class status,
consumption marks the body and creates an identity. Through consumption, an
individual establishes and maintains selﬂrood. Much like gender, class and ethnicity,
consumables become part of identity virtually inseparable from the self. The term
virtually is employed since consumption choices are ﬂuid and dynamic; subjectivity, as
well as identiﬁcation with particular ‘imagined communities’ may metarnorphose in
accord with the individual election. In the literary production under discussion, the
protagonists are active agents, cognizant of their election; nevertheless, not all form
healthy active subj ectivities. To an extent, commodities mark these women; however, as
subjects in the creation of selﬂrood, they re-appropriate goods instilling them with
meaning and consequently express an identity tied to those items. While consumption is
complex and contradictory, this inquiry posits that there does exist liberatory potential in
consumption (not unilaterally), as the consumer is dynamic in the construction,
transmission, and reception of meaning-making while creating an active female

subjectivity that denies essence and allows for a multiplicity of beings.

l7

Becoming: Female Subjectivit, Cultures of Consumption, and Embodiment in
Contemporary Spain is organized into ﬁve chapters that are intended to address issues of
becoming - the creation of female subjectivity- across the spectrum of diverse cultures of
consumption. It takes into consideration the type of selﬂrood encouraged and cultivated
in various spaces by way of multifarious practices and the consumption of distinct goods.
This study examines how the commodities are appropriated and the meaning created by
the various protagonists, as well as how each woman embodies affectually the goods
consumed. Overall, by way of the aforementioned, it explores the embodiment of new
types of creativity and the unveiling of spaces for the potential liberation of female
subjectivity, as well as acknowledge the potential for unhealthy subjectivity rooted in
consumption practices.

Chapter One, “Critical Framework”, introduces the primary themes of the
dissertation and the critical methodologies that will be employed in this investigation.
The principal concept utilized as a springboard for this inquiry, posited by theorist of
sexual difference Rosi Braidotti, is that of becoming: how does the nomadic feminist
female subject emerge? Following theories posited by Deleuze, Braidotti foments a
discussion on female subjectivity ﬂour a position of difference, emphasizing the
importance of seeing woman not as ‘other than’ man, which connotes a negative
difference. Rather, she charges her framework with a positive energy, by rethinking and
redeﬁning woman as subject of knowledge, contradicting the epistemological struggle
that has confronted women historically and deﬁned them as a lack. Braidotti’s work is
the historicization and de-mystiﬁcation of the supposedly organic notion of woman. She

critically analyzes and deconstructs the complex layers of woman’s ‘natural’ essence, so

18

as to open up a space of critical resistance against the ideas of the dominant economy. In
the re-location of the identity of woman, Braidotti dismantles patriarchal tendencies,
permitting the potential for a new social imaginary. As nomad, woman is multiple and in
transition, yet retains connection with history to accept responsibility for it. As subject
of knowledge with accountability, woman is empowered, devoid of essentialism, and
emancipated to become multiple subj ectivities.

To better comprehend this type of third wave feminism, radical feminism of
difference, the chapter begins with a short trajectory of the three waves of feminism.
This brief analysis provides a bridge to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of
not only third wave feminism, rather more importantly feminism of sexual difference.
The chapter continues in parallel with a necessary exploration of the manifestation and
evolution of feminism in Spain, detailing the immense transformations in female identity
from the establishment of formal political emancipation with the inception of the 1931
Constitution, to the re-enactment of the Civil Code of 1889 in 1939, to the transition and
beyond.

Utilizing theories of sexual difference, patchworked with the knowledge of
signiﬁcant cultural occurrences that have affected and altered the lives and identities of
women in Spain, as a platform, this chapter follows to discuss theories of modern
consumption and its relationship to the stabilization of socio-economic factors (Bocock).
The line of inquiry, then, focuses the argument on the potential for becoming, the
construction of self, through lifestyles founded in consumption practices. This chapter
also elaborates upon the liberatory potential of consumption, not in and of itself, rather as

an active process that requires the negotiation and re-appropriation of meaning. At the

19

same time, it does give serious thought to theorists who condemn consumption and
negate the possibility for individual emancipation within this scope. Within this section,
the discourse focuses on contradictory elements of consumption as presented by theorists
such as Marx and Baudrillard. A discussion of their respective approximations evidence
differing foci, but at the nucleus, the theories reﬂect the subject as a passive victim. With
respect to the model posited by Marx, the subject (consumer) has no option but to
relegate itself to the manipulations of capitalist machine, as there exists no escape.
Unlike Marx, Baudrillard does not locate stridulent fault with the production aspect of
capitalism, but rather the proliferation of the spectacle, which results ﬁom
commodiﬁcation of culture. Following his theory, the distinction between reality and
ﬁction blur due to the aestheticization of everyday life. Upon consideration of the
approximations of Marx and Baudrillard towards capitalism (production/consumption),
the discussion turns to ponder the active meaning-making process entailed among the
relationship between the consumer and the good. It is one of the central tenets of this
research that the subject is not passive, but free to negotiate and making meaning from
signs. Finally, this chapter elaborates upon the theories of ‘imagined communities’
(Anderson) and neo-tribes (Maffesoli). These groups are social conﬁgurations that
emerge and crystallize as a result of participation in cultures of consumption. These
dynamic conglomerations provide a space in which the individual ﬁnds afﬁnity, if only
temporal, with a community participating in a communion of shared interests that
transcends geographical, ethnic, religious, and gender borders.

Chapter Two, “Consumption in Amor, curiosidades, prozac y dudas”, focuses on

the ﬁrst novel of Lucia Etxebarria, one of the most well known contemporary female

20

authors in Spain. This author, herself, may be considered a hybrid product inﬂuenced by
globalization tendencies. While she was born in the north of Spain, Etxebarria has spent a
large portion of her life in Madrid; furthermore, she has traveled extensively abroad, and
was in residency at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. The myriad of experiences and
perspectives gleaned from not only her international journeys, but also her territorial re-
locations within Spain during a time of intense political transition reﬂect in her narrative
via the juxtaposition of the global and the local, the interrogation of societal conventions,
and the heterogeneous representation of woman. This chapter concentrates on the
construction of female subjectivity through the optic of the consumption of a plethora of
goods in order to examine the distinct becomings of selﬂrood as manifest through the
three Gaena sisters. The ﬁrst section (of ﬁve) of this chapter provides cultural context
that details Etxebarria’s personal narrative, novelistic production, and ideas and
experiences regarding female subjectivity and globalization. The next three parts are
dedicated to analyzing the divergent construction of subjectivity of the sisters; there is a
sub-chapter that elaborates upon each: Cristina, Rosa, and Ana. The part titled “Cristina
Gaena: From the Multinational to Planeta X: the Consumption and Embodiment of
Counterculture” traces the trajectory of identity of the youngest of the sisters based upon
her consumption of global cultural references in two distinct spatial realms: the
multinational and the underground bar scene. This particular section examines
contingencies of the two locales and how they play into the construction of her identity;
for instance, the closed, hierarchical organization of the multinational versus the affective
structure composed of music, lights, drugs, and bodies in the bar. In tracking the

evolution of her identity - as evidenced by the change in proximity — it is demonstrated

21

that Cristina contemplates new spaces for the notion of becoming by way of resisting, to
an extent, the hegemonic culture and toying with this paradigm. She could be said to
incarnate the third wave of feminism through her interrogation of systems, resistance to
hegemonic norms, and her free agency in the formation of her subjectivity. The next
section, “Rosa Gaena: Techno-colonization, the Cyborg, and Emotive Harmony”,
anatomizes the unfolding of the middle sister, a very successful single thirty year-old
director of ﬁnance in a large multinational. Her identity is mediated by various
discourses and to an extent her rhetoric exempliﬁes the tenets of second wave feminism
by way of her search for equality in a hegemony dominated by men. It highlights the
downfalls of the second wave’s ideology that searched for women’s equality, negating to
consider the inherent differences, which is also manifest in the character of Rosa.
Distinct from Cristina, a primary condition for the construction of her becoming is the
world of technology and capitalism. In light of this, this section explores the type of
hybrid identity — part machine and part human- cultivated in this character. The notion of
cyborg, as postulated by Donna Haraway, potentially serves as a subversive
conﬁguration7. According to Haraway, the notion of cyborg presents a provocative
hybrid:

...a creature of social reality as well as a creature of ﬁction. Social reality

is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-

changing ﬁction. The international women’s movements have constructed

‘women’s experience’, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial

 

7 Donna Haraway is considered to be one of the proponents of cyberfeminist theory, followed by theorists
such as Anne Balsamo and Chela Sandoval.

22

collective object. This experience is a ﬁction and fact of the most crucial,

political kind. (1991 149)
Through the melding of the mind and the machine, consciousness, intelligence, and
memory become enhanced. Cyborg, then, is a ﬁguration for one who dismantles or
surpasses traditional boundaries of the dominant economy. Nevertheless, it must be
mentioned that the theory of Haraway does not account for social nor historical
background and context. According to her theory, the cyborg does not possess historical
memory, which she contends, releases the subject (cyborg) from the groundings of
patriarchy. This, however, results problematic because the celebratory theory of new
technology negates differences in historical background such as race and gender. It may
be possible that Haraway’s use of the cyborg metaphor permits the inclusion of all by
smoothing over the issue of ﬁnding common ground among marginal groups. Taking into
account theories of the cyborg, this part explores how her body as text is coded with the
tenets of technology, from her thought process to clothing choice and gait. Nevertheless,
in studying the process of her becoming, required is a deconstruction of the various
ambiguities that layer her life and the mode in which she works through these issues.
Working through her experiences leads Rosa to incorporate a part that she has neglected
to allow surface: the emotional. In ﬂeshing through memory, this character begins her
quest for becoming by establishing connections with music that infuse her life with
passion. As cyborg, Rosa is textualized by the politics of the multinational yet in her
becoming, she elects to explore her inner self through the power of song. Freed from a
unitary, orthodox subjectivity, as cyborg Rosa exhibits a ﬂuid identity of not one nor the

other: she embodies a multiplicity that interrogates the patriarchy and suggests an

23

alternative to the totalizing structure. The last part of this chapter, “Ana Gaena:
Consumption and Embodiment of the Angel del hogar”, follows to investigate the
identity of the oldest sister, Ana, a mother and housewife. Also dissimilar from the
younger sisters, she constructs her identity through the consumption of high-end goods
and discourse gleaned from women’s magazines. Interestingly, her narrative is peppered
with the mention of luxury commodities, as this realm offers her a means of integrating
the conﬂicting demands of her life, and indeed offers her a temporal resolution; however,
she does create an unhealthy subjectivity. While her identity has been buttressed by the
tenets of the hegemony, through contemplation of her selﬂrood and a working through of
her experiences, Ana as a nomad, traverses a series of realizations that yield in a
becoming centered not on societal prescriptions, yet inner desires. While the three sisters
illustrate dissimilar representations of femininity in contemporary Spain, the
commonality among them manifests through their desire to interrogate prevalent gender
roles and supposedly organic identities. Radicalizing the concept of difference, the
Gaena’s commit to transgressive thinking, evidenced in the nomadic wanderings of their
respective becomings.

The third chapter titled “Gabriela Bustelo: Consumption and Embodiment”
revolves around the ﬁrst novel of Bustelo, Veo,veo (1996). Concepts like globalization,
identity, and consumption have been interwoven into the life of Bustelo from a young
age. This attributes itself to the fact that her family moved from Madrid to reside in
Washington DC. in the later half of the 1960s; the family returned to Madrid shortly
before the fall of the Franco regime. These international experiences compounded by the

clashing political and social lived realities may have served to endow Bustelo with a keen

24

perspective on female subjectivity within the various spaces and render her a composite.
The object of this chapter is to deconstruct the various intrigues that conjoin to articulate I
the identity of the protagonist, Vania Barcia; at the same time, it will illustrate the manner
in which she performs female identity through her consumption practices, negotiating a
subjectivity that yields libidinal returns. Similar to Chapter One, this chapter initiates
with a cultural context that elaborates upon the life of Gabriela Bustelo, detailing how her
international experiences have affected the narrative under discussion. Likewise, there
are personal reﬂections from the author, obtained during personal interviews, expounding
upon her perspectives of consumption and its relationship to female subjectivity. Chapter
Two is divided into ﬁve parts; following the “Cultural Context”, the part titled “Madonna
Re-Incarnate: a New Look a New You” presents a discussion of the consumption of
fashion, and the mode in which it textualizes the body of Vania as well as articulates her
identity. Through her chameleon-like approach to body dressing, the protagonist
fabricates her self as a hybrid, sporting a variety of fashions; however, all of the elections
incarnate strongly sexually charged images. In this manner, Vania toys with gender
conventions and the performance of female identity through the game of seeing and being
seen. The second part, titled “Music, Dance, Drugs, and Female Subjectivity”, affords a
discussion on the libidinal retum stemming from the creation of female subjectivity via
the consumption of the assemblage of the club: music, lights, drugs, and material goods.
The argument underlines the empowerment experienced by Vania to pursue a distinct
lifestyle and develop an autonomous sense of self in the underground world of the
movida nightlife. This is signiﬁcant because in this world — a social space typically

associated with amorous or even sexual overtures- she does not place extravagant

25

attention on male spectators, rather lavishes focus on herself assisted by the world of
consumer goods. Furthermore, her nomadic experiences within this territory deconstruct
the notion of a uniﬁed subject, opening the possibility for the unbinding of the deﬁnition
of female identity. The fourth section titled “Now you see me, now you don’t!: Re-
appropriation of the Gaze” explores the consumption of a central motif in the novel: the
gaze and the power it endows. As elaborated upon in the previous section, Vania
parodies conventional female stereotypes as she is the diva of the image, and embraces at
will a multiplicity of identities that negate the concept of a uniﬁed subject. The ﬂuidity
and playing with identity is expounded upon as it relates to the crafting of her selﬂrood
and the gaze. Through the sexually charged image she creates, she is cognizant of the
power she exerts over the male gaze, mocking the pathetic behavior of the men who
gawk. Hence, this section delves into the pleasure Vania receives from the re-
appropriation of the gaze intimately linked to displaying herself and interacting with the
consumer realm. The ﬁnal portion, the conclusion, expounds upon the becoming of
Vania; her nomadic departures that stem from the creation of her own designs and
grammar on subjectivity that deviate from the conventions dictated by the masculine
economy. Furthermore, it afﬁrms that while Vania’s life is not free from the constraints
of the hegemonic system, she embodies innovative molds and exposes spaces for a
libidinal return on female subjectivity.

Chapter Four, “Silvia Grij alba: Consumption and Embodiment” explores the ﬁrst
novel of Grijalba, Alivio rdpido (2002). Akin to the other authors under discussion,
Grijalba’s life has been mediated by global tendencies and cultures of consumption. As a

music journalist for El Mundo, she has had the opportunity to travel internationally and

26

report upon various types of music festivals: techno, rock, and beyond. Grijalba, herself,
may represent the concept of a cyborg through the manifestion of the multitudinal
contingencies of her identity: novelist, poet, journalist, bar owner, and electronic
musician. She embodies a hybrid product of cultural negotiations as she has traversed the
musical landscape participating both directly and indirectly, evident in the intrigues of the
work under discussion. Resulting from her personal narrative, she has intimate
knowledge of the types of female subjectivity cultivated in the sonic terrain. The
principal objective of this chapter is to elaborate upon the type of female selfhood
encouraged in the protagonist, Alba, within the techno realm; at the same time, it
considers diverse experiences that lead to nomadic wanderings and the cultivation of her
subjectivity within a new locale: the public relations industry. Following the “Cultural
Context” is a section titled “Traversing the Techno Terrain: Music, Ritual, and
Commodiﬁcation”, a discussion that elaborates upon the birth and history of techno
music, a genre with roots in a counter-culture, anti-establishment thought process. An
eternally transforming music style, techno is both innovative and progressive, and similar
to other musical genres such as rock, has become commodiﬁed. This is taken into
consideration as this section discusses the band Asian Vibes, in which Alba is a member
and her boyfriend, Fernando, the much deiﬁed lead singer. As such, it discusses the role
of celebrity and fan and their resulting commodiﬁcation in popular culture. This
discussion establishes the foundation for the consideration of female subjectivity in the
terrain of techno, which is elaborated upon in “Proxemics of Techno and Portraits of
Female Subjectivity”. This part describes two distinct female becomings and resulting

embodiments in the techno scene: that of Alba and that of her mother. Among a plethora

27

of other elements, what Alba consumes most — albeit in a static mode -is the image and
celebrity of her boyfriend, Fernando. The argument turns to deconstruct the type of
subjectivity encouraged via the consumption of the techno landscape as well as her
unhealthy consumption of the spectacle of Fernando. These experiences are then
contrasted with those of her mother, Soﬁa, a hippy who experiences this space as a re-
birth and a territory that lends libidinal returns to the construction of female subjectivity.
The following section, “Nomadic Journey of Alba to Active-Subjectivity”, analyzes the
transformation in the consumption habits of the protagonist that emerge due to the
unforeseen imprisonment of her boyfriend, Fernando. Setting off on a quest that leads
her through diverse spaces and happenings-the band is defunct and she is employed full
time at a public relations ﬁrm- Alba works through experiences to arise to a heightened
awareness of self exhibiting the nomadic subject. No longer passively consuming the
spectacle of Fernando, she re-constructs herself according to her desires, conscious of her
body as a commodity. The ﬁnal section, “Conclusion”, reiterates the manner in which
the nomadic journey of Alba resulted as a ﬂeshing through of her experiences and
working with these knowledges to actively form her subjectivity not in accord with
prescription, but rather the recognition of her desires.

The ﬁnal chapter of this investigation is “Interconnections” which serves to draw
parallels and underline contrasts among the novels under discussion. It aims to engage a
discussion regarding the multiplicity of female subjectivity through the convergence of
the various cultures of consumption. This chapter draws together the diverging
representations of woman as portrayed by Etxebarria, Bustelo, and Grijalba to underline

the multifarious modes in which these women negotiate meaning by way of consuming

28

goods that serve as articulation points of their identity. Consumption functions as a
means for the active formation of self. Through consuming, these women are agents that
enact change, one that may yield liberatory potential for female subjectivity stemming
from autonomous self-creation. It concludes by drawing connections between events of
present-day Spanish reality and the novelistic production and suggests that, working
together, these outlets potentially serve to destabilize and re-deﬁne the concept of

Woman.

29

Chapter 11: Critical Framework

Overview

This chapter is dedicated to the exploration of key theories fundamental to the
analysis of the literature under discussion as it relates to cultures of consumption and the
female subject. The ﬁrst section entitled “Emergent Modes of Femininity” historicizes
the Western feminist movement, and then compares its trajectory with feminism within
Spain; the investigation contextualizes feminism and its struggles as well as its evolution
within Spain in the twentieth century. Utilizing the discussion on feminist ideology as a
foundation, this chapter proceeds to examine theories related to consumption in “Cultures
of Consumption and the Female Subject”. This section elaborates upon the divergent
understandings of the term ‘consumption’ and then works to locate consumption with the
rise of mass consumer society since the 19508 through the optic of international
conditions as well as those local to Spain. It critically analyzes the factors speciﬁc to
Spanish society that aided the emergence of consumerism in Spain in the 19605, and
expands on the transformations in the relationship between female identity and
consumption in Spain within the last ﬁfty years. The last section of this chapter deals
with “Cultures of Consumption: Imagined Communities and Neo-Tribes” which are
collectivities ——assemb1ed and re-assembled- by virtue of a desire to consume a like good.
These ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson) or neo-tribes (Maffesoli), which exist as ﬂuid
markers of identity, have emerged in the era of postmodernity through the globalization
of cultures and economies and the progress of consumer capitalism. The patchworking
and interweaving of the aforementioned theories establish a foundation for the analysis of

the work of Lucia Etxebarria, Gabriela Bustelo, and Silvia Grij alba.

30

Emergent Modes of Femininity

Feminism is the ideology of women’s liberation that deems intrinsic in all its
approaches the notion that women suffer injustice due to their sex. Under this broad
umbrella, various feminisms offer differing analyses of the agents or causes of female
oppression. Nevertheless, feminism is a sphere of beliefs, the nucleus of which is that
women are oppressed and action must be taken to rectify their condition.
a. First Wave Feminism

This term refers to the ﬁrst concerted movement working towards the reform of

women’s social and legal inequalities in the nineteenth century". While this ‘wave’ of
feminism dates ﬁ'om the Enlightenment, stressing equality, rights, liberation, and
emancipation, it was not until the 1850’s that the Western world witnessed an organized
feminist movementg. First wave feminists largely responded to speciﬁc injustices they
had themselves experienced in the areas of education, employment, and marriage laws.
They were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women, nor did

they necessarily see themselves as feminists in the modern sense"). Among the major

 

' It must be noted, however, that even before the advent of the ﬁrst wave of feminism in the Western world,
ﬁgures such as the British Mary Wollstonecraft fought on behalf of the emancipation and equality of
women. In 1792, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Women that drew on ideals from the
Enlightenment -equality and reason- to challenge the subordination of women, effectively planting the seed
for the future generations of women in their battle of equality. Her brilliant contributions to women’s
advancement are many. First and foremost, she is known for condemning the exclusion of women based
upon sexual difference as well as elaborating upon the inconsistencies fundamental to the stability of
patriarchal discourse, and also for defending the need for reformation in the educational system. Perhaps
her greatest contribution, though, was her determination to effect transformation, which was a spark to
many other women for centuries to come. Wollstonecraft recognized that in spite of sexual difference, both
man and woman possessed an equal capacity to reason, a quality that differentiates human beings from
animals. Nevertheless, the dominant discourse defended the masculine economy justifying their superiority
through their capacity to reason. In order to entertain the notion of the possibility of equality among the
sexes, she believed that the national education system was in need of serious modiﬁcations. These would
entail the inclusion of women in the system, thus opening up future possibilities for the female subject in
areas outside of the domestic sphere.

9 In Langharn Place (London) middle-class women united to discuss topical issues and publish the English
Woman 's Journal (1858-1864).

1° The term ‘feminist’ was not coined until 1895.

31

achievements of the ﬁrst-wave feminists were: the opening of higher education to
women, the reformation of the girls’ secondary-school system, including participation in
formal national examinations, the widening of access to professions, especially medicine,
and the recognition of married women’s property right, sealed in the Married Women’s
Property Act of 1870. Although active until the end of the First World War, ﬁrst wave
feminists were unsuccessful in securing women the right to vote.
b. Second Wave Feminism

The twentieth century will be remembered historically for its momentous progress
with respect to female subjectivity attained during that time period. The dynamic
evolutions in technology as well as the globalization of cultures should not be overlooked
as motivators for these breakthroughs on women’s behalf. It was also precisely during
this century that women experienced a cultural evolution without historical precedent.
The progress achieved on behalf of the women’s movement was due primarily to the
conﬂuence of multiple circumstances, the ﬁrst being the feminist battle for the right to
education.11 It was not, however, until the 1960’s that a coherent feminist movement —
the second wave - garnered momentum”.

Second-wave feminists took a different approach than their predecessors. Instead of
pursuing equality with men, these women searched to reclaim their feminine self through
the slogan ‘the personal is political’, obtainable through the afﬁrmation of their

irreducible differences. They emphasized the difference between sex and gender; sex is

 

" This, combined with various artistic movements and economic expansion, gave women more autonomy
and visibility in both the cultural and social sectors.

'2 The term ‘second wave’ was coined by Marsha Lear, and refers to the substantial increase in feminist
activity that occtured in America, Britain, and other European countries from the late sixties onwards.

32

the biological being and gender is the social and cultural interpretation of that beingI 3 .
Nevertheless, it was obvious from the outset that the movement was not uniﬁed, with
differences emerging between black feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and
social feminism. The second wave feminists extended the range of social opportunities
available to women, but also through intervention within the spheres of reproduction,
sexuality and cultural representation, to change their domestic and private lives. The
feminist of the second wave made a tremendous impact upon Western societies as well as
inspired the struggle for women’s rights across the world.
c. Third Wave Feminism

First wave feminism searched to include women in ‘humanity’; second wave
feminism stressed the sexual difference of women, rejecting the notion of a general
humanity. Third wave feminism looks at how the difference between men and women is
constructed and also performed. Sexual difference can also be deconstructed. The
supposed binary opposition between the masculine and the feminine relies upon a priori
knowledge as well as an oppressive system of values. Third wave feminists, such as
Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, reject the binary model; they posit there are not two
sexes but rather a series of sexual identiﬁcations and performances and there is no natural
sex underlying our gender. Hence we only think we have a natural and pre-cultural
sexuality because of gender. Instead of the sex/ gender distinction or the assertion of a

common humanity, third wave feminism stresses polymorphous and groundless

 

'3 In the United States, second wave feminism arose out of the civil rights and anti-war movements in
which women, disillusioned with their second-class status even in the activist environment of student
politics, began to join together to counter the discrimination (Larumbe 67-68). The tactics employed by
second wave feminists varied, from highly published activism, such as the protest against the Miss America
beauty contest in 1968, to the establishment of small consciousness-raising groups. Second wave feminism
in Great Britain was similarly diverse in focus, although it was rooted in working-class socialism, as
illustrated in 1968 by the strike of worrren workers at the Ford car plant for equal pay (Larumbe 81-82).

33

difference; that is, not a difference between men and women, but an unending and
unstable difference that is common in postmodern writing”. Works of postmodernity,
for example, refuse any notion of a natural humanity or a natural sexuality, opting for the
argument that sex is textual; it is always in production and up for interpretation and
questioning.

Third wave feminists rethink alterity as the fundamental goal of feminist theory
and politics. The Italian philosopher Rosi Braidotti, among others, seeks through
dissimilar ways, to radicalize and complicate the notion of difference, particularly sexual
difference. In the 19705 through the writings of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia
Kristeva, sexual difference theory garnered attention. Collectively their works inspired
radical change in feminist thought through their careful and insightful consideration of
the workings and mechanics of language in their shaping and formation of our notions of
masculine and feminine.

Third wave feminist Rosi Braidotti, in Patterns of Dissonance, grapples with the
slippery history of the Enlightenment regime of ‘knowledge’ and ‘truth’ and the
subsequent limits imposed upon human subjectivity from the reiﬁcation of this

paradigm15 . The purpose of her analysis is to question the possibility of existence of the

 

”The term postmodern is contentious as it has been described and re-described from multiple and varying
standpoints. This dissertation adheres to the notion that the postmodern encapsulates heterogeneity,
discontinuity, and destabilization, as Ihab Hassan points out (later to be conceded by Jencks and Lyotard).
Immanently characteristic of postmodernity is the absence of deterrninancy:
compounded of subtendencies that the following words evoke: heterodoxy, pluralism,
eclecticism, randomness, revolt, deformation. The later alone subsumes a dozen current
terms of unmaking: decreation, disintegration, deconstruction, decenterrnent,
displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance, decomposition, de-
deﬁnition, demystiﬁcation, detotalization, delegitirnation (Hassan 9)

The postmodern is connected with the breakdown of belief in universals, encompassing scientiﬁc truth and
objectivity. Many scholars link this epistemological fragmentation to the fall of the hegemony of Western
culture, while others see the age of information as fundamental to this shift.

'5 Braidotti further develops these theories in her later works Nomadic Subject: Embodiment and Sexual
Diﬁ'erence (1994) and Metamorphoses (2002).

34

female subject within the masculine libidinal economic order as established in accord
with the tenets of the Enlightenment. Braidotti initiates her analysis with the
aforementioned period, an era in which man was associated with reason; she continues
with Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories and closes with a study of
postmodernity. In ﬂeshing out the various theories, she historicizes the speciﬁc
relationship between the masculine, logic and rationality, revealing that Western society
is both implicitly and explicitly overtly masculine. In the same vein, she demonstrates
cogently that the feminine has unequivocally been associated with passive, irrational, and
hysterical qualities (Nomadic Subjects 139). Braidotti afﬁrms that women’s historical
heritage has been rooted in the practice of patriarchy; a practice that coincides with the
production of a libidinal and material economy whereby the law is upheld by a phallic
symbol that operates through the construction of supposed natural differences and the
hierarchical organization of these differences. This results in the establishment of a
binary opposition that Braidotti calls one/other (213). Through this dualistic, black-
white ideology, patriarchal systems have equated woman with nature and the body, a
force that must be tamed, bound, and secured. This dominant ideology ﬁrrthermore
produces a stigrnatization of woman that renders her a foreigner, not one but always the

6

other: ‘. . .the borderline image, pointing to the outside of the cultural and symbolic
order” (213). The masculine economy imagines woman as an absence or a lack. As
such, the symbolic order is predicated on the sovereignty of the phallus and the absence
of the feminine except as an object of male desire. This practice has operated and

continues to operate through the construction of differences and the resulting hierarchy of

these ‘asymmetries’.

35

Braidotti’s ﬁrst objective is to enunciate the problematic questions that surround
the structure of feminine subjectivity so as to challenge the dualism that traditional
theories posit: the masculine as subject and the feminine as other (or other than)”. This
theorist challenges the political project of the Enlightenment -a project founded on
equality and ﬁeedom for all - particularly objecting its essentialist, rationalist and
humanist underpinnings.

The challenge that Braidotti presents is to re-think the idea of woman - only
possible through the abandonment of the former regime — so as to (re)present woman
unbound and in ﬂux. Within the masculine libidinal economy, the woman can only be
other; she is the binary opposition of all that embodies man. In re-thinking the
subjectivity of woman, Braidotti, elaborating upon some of the major themes of Luce
Irigaray’s This Sex Which is Not One, postulates the status of woman is transitory and
ﬂuid; it is identity in ﬂux. In her essay “The Politics of Ontological Difference” (1989),
Braidotti deals with the identity of woman, stressing that it is in a state of ‘becoming’
instead of ‘being’. She utilizes the word ‘becoming’ so as to emphasize that identity and
subjectivity must occur in a tense that is different from the past/present manners of
thinking.

I would like us to adopt a special mode of thinking, trying to leave behind
the centuries-old habit that consists of thinking in terms of identity and
oppositions, thesis and antithesis. Let us think differently about this, in a

mode that I would call, following Irigaray, the conditional present.

 

'6 Braidotti offers a plethora of examples demonstrating the dualistic relation among man and woman. For
instance, man= rationality, agency, logic whereas the feminine = passive, invisible, irrational.

36

If you look back to the early feminist theory of the 19608 and
1970s you could say that it is written in the simple future tense, expressing
a deep sense of determination, of certainty about the course of history and
the irresistible emancipation of women. The ﬁrture is the mode of
expressing an open-ended game of possibilities: half prophecy and half
utopia and, above all, blueprint for action. The conditional mode,
however, goes beyond the logic of ideology and of teleological progress.
More akin to dreamtime, it is the tense of open potentiality and
consequently of desire in the sense of a web of interconnected conditions
of possibility. The conditional present posits the continuity of desire as
the only unifying agent between self and other, subject and history. Desire
determines the ontological plane on which the subject deﬁnes her-/him-
self. Therefore the conditional is the mode of inscription of desire into the

present, in the here and now of our speaking stance. (103)

Borrowing from Irigaray, Braidotti implements her concept of the conditional mode and

utilizes it to challenge our concept of the present material reality. According to Braidotti,

it is from the platform of this enunciative position that women negotiate the state of

becoming. She asserts that subjectivity of woman is in opposition to the false

universality ediﬁed in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, her approach to identity and

becoming yields a positive afﬁrmation of women’s desire to assert and enact different

forms of subjectivity. In this line, Chantal Mouffe, a French feminist, signals the

polemical nature of the origins of Truth since the Enlightenment, equating it to “the

Enlightenment project of self-foundation” (Bertens 191). Mouffe argues that the

37

traditional categories for subjectivity, based upon the Enlightenment project, cease to
function as valid measures for female representation. She afﬁrms:
[. . .] it is precisely the ontological status of the central categories of
the discourses of modernity, and not their content, that is at stake;
that the erosion of the status is expressed through the ‘postmodern’
sensibility, and that this erosion, far from being a negative
phenomenon, represents an enormous ampliﬁcation of the content
and operability of the values of modernity, making it possible to
ground them in foundations much more solid than those of the
Enlightenment project (and its various Positivists or Hegelian-
Marxist reformulations). (190)
Thus, Mouffe seems to lend support to the enunciative position posited by Braidotti. This
can be realized, she contends, through the dissolution of categories, in which the ﬁgure
'Woman ’ is always other (other than the masculine), which will enact a further
radicalization of the possibilities for the female subject. Her theory is an emancipatory
politics of difference that rejects the universality of the Enlightenment of undifferentiated
human nature (190).

Since the late 1980’s through the present century, a new generation of theories
grounded in sexual difference has emerged in scholarly writings from Europe, Australia,
and the United States, including the well-known scholar Rosi Braidotti. These theorists
aim to base, as their predecessors, sexual difference as the principal concept for the

embodiment of the feminine subject”. At the same time, these theorists seek to empty

 

'7 The word “predecessors” refers to the ﬁrst generation of sexual difference theorists such as Cixous and
Irigaray.

38

the substantive and normative concept of terms such as female and woman.
Consequently, the feminist subject effectively escapes the dichotomous logic that
Western culture has assigned to sexed identities. Braidotti’s ftmdamental goal is to
afﬁrrn feminine and women’s difference without making any generalization regarding the
nature of the female body or psyche. She asserts that the best exit from the dualistic logic
is to work through (her emphasis) it. Braidotti elaborates:
Working through the network of discursive deﬁnitions of ‘woman’ is
useful not only in what it produces as a process of deconstruction of
female subjectivity but also as a process, which allows for the constitution
and the legitimation of a gendered female feminist community. (200)

As such, a key component of Braidotti’s theory is countermemory. She posits that
countermemory is a contingent to resist assimilation into dominant modes of representing
the female subject as it endows the subject with the power to recall what has been learned
and utilizes this cognizance for the future.

Feminists - or other critical intellectuals as nomadic subjects — are those
who have forgotten to forget injustice and symbolic poverty: their
memory is activated against the stream; they enact a rebellion of
subjugated knowledges. The nomadic tense is imperfect: it is active,
continuous...(25)

According to Braidotti the feminist subject must begin by questioning existing deﬁnitions
and representations of women so as to create new images of female subjectivity. She
utilizes the term ‘ﬁguration’ to mean “politically informed images that portray the

complex interaction of levels of subjectivity’ ’(4). Hence, a series of experiences enact a

39

working through or understanding that yields a consciousness on the part of the subject
and allows for becoming-woman, the nomadic feminist subject.

The ﬁguration refers to a mode of thought that evokes or expresses ways out of
the phallogocentric vision of the subject”. The ﬁguration that Braidotti employs to
represent the female subject is the nomad. She employs this term because it reﬂects the
situation of the postmodern subject, in which the nomad moves across experiences,
blurring boundaries. She argues that the nomad is not determined through the literal act
of transplantation but through a subversion of set conventions or working within
established conditions to the advantage of the feminist subject. Furthermore, the nomad
does not represent homelessness or necessarily displacement; in becoming-woman, the
nomadic feminine subject is located. Likewise, the nomad is a ﬁguration for the subject
who “relinquished all idea, desire, or nostalgia for ﬁxity” (23). Accordingly, the subject
expresses a desire for an identity composed of shifts, without essential unity”. From a
nomadic perspective, the political realm is a form of intervention that acts on the
discursive and material registers of the subject, thus bringing together many connections.
The task of re-deﬁning female subjectivity requires the working through of the plethora
of accumulated images, concepts, and representations of woman - female identity- such
as they have been codiﬁed by masculine economy in the Western culture.

In her work Nomadic Subjectivities: Embodiment and Sexual Diﬂerence,
Braidotti underscores an important question for sexual difference theorists: “Can we
formulate otherness, difference, without devaluing it? Can we think of the other not as

other-than, but as a positively other entity?” (123) She concurs with Irigaray that

 

'8 This mode of thought entails a move beyond dualistic conceptual constraints.
'9 Bradotti comments on the persistence of the nomadic trait in contemporary political movements, from
“hippies” to the “new age gypsies”, the peace camps, the music festivals, and feminist happenings (26).

40

woman’s real difference, her radical otherness, cannot be represented within existing
cultural systems: “Woman as the Other (other-than) remains in excess of or outside the
phallogocentric framework” (Speculum 143). The feminist philosopher Alice Jardine
reinforces Braidotti’s theory (Nomadic Subjectivities: Embodiment and Sexual
Diﬂerence) afﬁrming:
Is there a way to think outside the patriarchally determined Same/Other,
Subj ect/Object dichotomies diagnosed as the fact of culture by Simone de
Beauvoir thirty years ago, and, in the process, still include women as a
presence? In other words, do we want to continue re-organizing the
relationship of difference to sameness through dialectics of valorization, or
is there a way to break down the overdetermined metaphors which
continue to organize our perceptions of reality? (214)
Braidotti effectively answers Jardine’s plea through her theory of sexual difference. The
goal, then, is not to deny difference nor attempt to achieve gender equality. In doing so,
feminist theory would endorse masculine sites of power and be forced to assimilate into
the dominant libidinal economy. Rather, she posits, the goal is to recover the feminine
within sexual difference.

The solution proposed by Braidotti can be described as a theory of sexual
difference that afﬁrms the importance and value of the feminine while refusing to endow
it with substantive content. This refusal is consistent with theories on postmodernity as it
can be read as an attempt to deviate from the establishment of a ‘universal truth’.

Rather, the feminine subject resists deﬁnition, cannot be limited, and embodies

41

multiplicity and otherness, in contraposition to the identiﬁcation we know as Woman
She states,
...one speaks as a woman, although the subject “woman” is not a
monolithic essence deﬁned once and for all but rather the site of multiple,
complex, and potentially contradictory sets of experiences, deﬁned by
overlapping variables such as class, race, age, sexual preference, etc. (4)
In this way the feminist subject is nomadic; it is intensive, multiple, embodied, and
cultural. In her radical anti-conventional position, she posits that one speaks as a woman
so as to be an example for other women, forming a collective empowerment, as agents
for change. In light of these theories, the ideology of feminism is not about an essence of
woman, but reclaiming and regenerating the notion of woman. The dynamic multiplicity
of woman is patently obvious in our contemporary society; all we must do is look at
groups such as the Riot Grrls, predominately teen age or early twenty-something year old
women who subscribe to punk aesthetics, to other collectivities like the girlie girls who
have responded to the second wave and their anti-feminine seriousness, and as such the
girlie girls “have reclaimed girl culture, which is made up of such formerly disparaged
girl things as knitting, the color pink, nail polish, and fun” (Baumgardner 80) and beyond.
As seen through these examples, the concept woman is not the naturalized binary
opposition to man, rather through a recuperation of masculine spaces — music,
pornography, and sexual pleasure, technology- women continue to defy patriarchy and
add depth and breadth to the notion of the female subject.
Feminist theory is not just a movement of critical opposition to the false

universality of the subject, but it is a positive declaration of women’s desire to afﬁrrn and

42

enact different forms of subjectivity. As such, Braidotti proposes the concept of the
nomad -the itinerant — that does not conform to the naturalized model: “The nomad is a
transgressive identity” (35). It involves a questioning of existing deﬁnitions and a
creation of new images of female subjectivity. The process of becoming-woman entails
nomadic thinking that involves expressing and naming different ﬁgurations for a de-
centered subjectivity”. Within this framework, the subject connects, circulates, and
moves on. That is to say that she does not form static identiﬁcations, but is transitory by
nature. The ultimate concern is not to achieve sex-speciﬁc identity, but rather the
dissolution of self into multiple subjects. Hence, as Braidotti posits, the rejection of
universality of knowledge in conjunction with her theory of the nomadic subject results
in a re-deﬁnition of the embodied nature of Woman that manifests in dynamic, transverse
ways.
(1. Feminism in Spain: an historical overview

The aforementioned trajectory of feminism within the Western world may not
gratuitously be applied to the Spanish culture due to its long history of dictatorship
(1939-1975), under which woman was Other and had no legal rights nor voice. Thus, in
order to better understand the place that feminism occupies within contemporary Spanish
culture, and more signiﬁcantly the mode in which the writings of the authors treated in
this study are informed, it is necessary to begin with an overview of feminism in Spain in
the twentieth century and then bridge these concepts with Braidotti’s theory of the

nomad.

 

2° Braidotti views the concept of becoming-wornan as a positive category. It is within this space that
woman has agency, and as such can ﬂuidly negotiate the systems of power.

43

With few exceptions, women within the Spanish culture have been consistent
victims of marginalization and subordination in diverse arenas ranging from education to
marriage laws and beyond. In 1900-01 “51.111 alurnnos cursaban estudios medics y
17.186 superiores por 5.557 y 1 alumnas, respectivarnente”. (Riera 33) Moreover,
Article 57 of the Civil Code of 1889 stated: “E1 marido debe proteger a la mujer y ésta
obedecer a1 marido” (33). As the quote evidences, historically in Spain the law has
imposed upon the woman a position of inferiority and passivity; as such women —- due to
an utter absence of options- consumed the dictates of the masculine libidinal order. The
twentieth century in Spain was a period of extreme contrasts for the feminist movement.
With the birth of the Second Republic in Spain in 1931, “both a symptom of and response
to a national political crisis which mirrored the Europe-wide crisis of the 19303” (Graham
99), processes of change were set in motion that modiﬁed personally and politically the
family unit, and above all, women and their identity. This was a time period, not only in
Spain but across the Western world, confronted with clashing perspectives on life: rural
versus urban, religious versus secular, static hierarchies versus organized labor. These
two distinct outlooks on life — tradition versus progress - produced crises proliferating
into a plethora of realms: social, economic, political, and personal spheres. To begin
with, there was an obvious attraction to tradition due to the familiarity and comfort it bred
and the stability it invoked. Helen Graham suggests that this conservative attraction was
based on anxiety and tension produced by new conceptions of living. It is interesting to
note that “the central impulse of this social-cultural conservatism was often directed at
reimposing or reinforcing traditional gender roles on women -— the social and in particular

reproductive) policies of Italian and German fascism being just the most widely known

examples” (100). This model was also developing in Spain as well, but was temporarily
displaced in the late 1920’s by the collapse of the Primo de Rivera military dictatorship
(1922-1930), and the proclamations of the Second Republic.

The new regime of the Second Republic was ﬁreled by a liberal ideology,
composed of a variety of progressive sectors of “Spain’s urban lower middle classes and
the social democratic current within the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), backed by the
electoral muscle of its near million-strong trade union movement, the UGT” (Graham
100). The modus operandi of the Republic — to be realized through the ampliﬁcation of
the state’s power - was progress achieved through political, economic, social, and cultural
modernity. This idea took form in December of 1931 with the new Constitution”. The
reforms enacted by the state of the Second Republic were controversial and wide spread
with the intent to divvy up the power. The goal was to remove socio-economic power
from the oligarchy and disseminate it among diverse factions of the new state. The aim
of the reforms was to affect every facet of Spanish life — including but not limited to the
army, education, church, culture, and the body — through legislation. A signiﬁcant part of
the reform was focused on the status of women. It is compelling to note that under the
Second Republic women were considered to be the legal equals of men.

Under the December 1931 Constitution, they could vote and stand for
parliament (the legal majority being set at 23 years for both men and
women). In addition, a package of progressive social reforms, including
one of the most liberal divorce laws in existence (February 1932),

signiﬁcantly enhanced their civil and employment rights. For the ﬁrst

 

2' It must be noted that the Constitution of 1931 was based upon models utilized in Mexico in 1917 and in
Weimar Germany in 1919.

45

time women could legally act as witnesses and guardians, sign contracts,
and administer estates. Nor were employers formally able to dismiss
women merely because they had married. (Graham 101)
While women were formally politically emancipated with the inception of the 1931
Constitution, the lived social reality was quite distinct. These reforrnations were enacted
institutionally from the top down, instead of from the bottom up or by means of grass
root movements. The way in which these were enacted had an effect on the recognition
of women’s legal equality for many reasons. To begin with, Spain was a largely rural
country with few urban centers, which underscores the clash among traditional and
progressive modes of living. These rural units, coined ‘la Espai’ia profunda’, were
disconnected from the urban centers and progressive modes of thinking and being, and
following their traditional customs that provided them with a sense of stability and
familiarity. Furthermore, women encountered other familiar obstacles; those that desired
to enter the work force were also faced with the double burden of caring for the family as
well as employment outside of the home. Added to this, many women were forced to
exclude themselves from the economic sector due to a lack of education:
Es lOgico, pues, que a primeros de este siglo e1 71,5 por 100 de las muj eres
fueran analfabetas (frente a1 56,6 por 100 de los varones) y que en 1930
este porcentaje no bajara del 58. La instruccidn pr’rblica, ya de por si
raquitica en cuanto a recursos, no podia despilfarrarse en una formacién
totahnente inr'rtil. Como maximo habia que enseﬁarles las tareas

<<propias>> de su sexo. (Riera 32)

46

And those women fortunate to have an education — albeit limited - to enter the work force
were faced with other obstacles such as the hostility of masculine dominated economic
order. In sum, tradition, customs, and morality marked as other the woman and justiﬁed
her inferiority based upon her sex.

It is signiﬁcant, though, the testimony of Maria Martinez Sierra at the ‘Ateneo de
Madrid’ in 1931: “el gobiemo provisional habia hecho mas por la mujer en quince dias
que cualquier otro gobiemo desde el reinado de Alfonso X” (Scanlon 263). The
inauguration of the Second Republic meant tremendous advances in equality and civil
rights on behalf of the woman. Nevertheless, the social reality did not exactly mirror this
testimony, as the advances in title did not translate in practice. According to Riera in Las
mujeres de los 90, “Pretender que en cinco aﬁos escasos se cambiaran los valores, ideas y
tradiciones de siglos era esperar lo irnposible” (35). It was, however, an enormous leap
as it opened up new possibilities that previously were unattainable, starting the wheels
rolling for the feminist movement. This movement in Spain was protagonized by Clara
Campoamor, one of the two female high-ranking ofﬁcials in government. She
championed the arduous task of amending the ConstituciOn of 1931, implementing
modiﬁcations in favor of the condition of the woman. Instead of reading “No podran ser
fundamento de privilegio juridico: la naturaleza, la ﬁliacibn, el sexo, la clase social, la
riqueza, las ideas politicas ni las creencias religiosas”, it was modiﬁed to “reconocer en
principio la igualdad de derechos de los dos sexos” (Riera 36). She also stridently
defended women’s suffrage, making remarkable advances despite the opposition from

not only her own political party but also the only other woman in parliament, Victoria

47

Kent”. Nevertheless, the Spanish society in general, and women in particular, were not

ﬁrlly prepared or comfortable with this responsibility.
Los pocos ahos de la H Repriblica signiﬁcaron un avance espectacular
en la igualdad de los derechos de la mujer y en su consideracién como
persona. Se dice que los cambios se produjeron desde <<arriba>>, que
la sociedad espafiola y, mas concretamente, las muj eres no estaban
preparadas para estas reformas; que el voto sélo sirvio para que ganara la
derecha en 1933; que se concedio el divorcio pero que casi nadie lo
utilizo. (35)

The Second Republic fomented an atmosphere auspicious to the advancements of
feminism in Spain. While some European countries were years ahead in their feminist
movements, Spain, under the direction of the Republic, ﬁnally opened up possibilities for
women that were not plausible a decade earlier. The Second Republic, though, was
short-lived as it fell in 1939 with the end of the Civil War. The war spanned three years,
a period during which women’s movements grew and their identities transformed. As the
men marched off to war, the domain of woman evolved from the domestic sphere to
industry. As men were required within the military factions, their absence in the job
place necessitated that women leave the home to replace them. “Cientos de miles se
incorporaron a la industria y muchas otras sustituyeron a los hombres en las tareas del

campo. En la zona republicana, se seguia legislando en favor de la igualdad, 1a

 

‘2 Clara Campoamor, one of the two female delegates in Parliament, amended the ﬁrst text that treated the
idea of: “reconocer en principio la igualdad de derechos de los dos sexos” (Riera 36). Furthermore,
Carnpoamor stridently defended women’s right to vote, against the opposition of her own party and
Victoria Kent, the only other woman delegate in Parliament. While Kent’s ideas were not rooted in
mysoginisrn, a common fear among progressive was the conservative slant of women votes, which was an
historical precedent. Kent was preoccupied with women’s right to vote because she thought that: “ellos
pondria en peligro a la 11 Republica ya que las mujeres votarian masivamente a la reaccién” (36)

48

Generalitat legalizo e1 aborto y establecio la plena capacidad juridica de la mujer” (Riera
38). While the Civil War opened up possibilities beyond the home front for women on
both sides, those in support of the Republic in Catalui’ta were granted a further dose of
autonomy with the legalization of abortion. Clearly through the efforts of women’s
movements, in conjunction with the circumstances of war, Spanish women were making
incredible signiﬁcant advances. Unfortunately, with the end of the war and the
installation of the Franco regime, women as well as women’s movements faced a dark,
bleak future.

Enseﬁaremos alas muj eres el cuidado del hogar, porque es una
pena que mueran tantos niﬂos que son siervos de Dios y ﬁrturos soldados
de Espafia. Les enseﬁaremos también el arreglo de la casa y a conocer las
labores artesanas y la musica. Les enseﬂaremos este modo de ser que
queria J osé Antonio para todos los espaiioles, para que asi ellas, cuanto
tengan hijos, forrnen a los pequeiios en el arnor de Dios y en esta manera
de ser de la F alange (Pilar Primo de Rivera qtd in Riera 39)

Pilar Primo de Rivera, in May of 1939, uttered these words to ten thousand women of la
SecciOn Femenina at a reunion to celebrate the victory of Franco. It is curious, though
not surprising, the message disseminated by the female voice of the dictatorship: a
woman’s domain —- her space - is the home. As such, she consumes cleanliness, order,
docility, and must incarnate angelic qualities, for she is to be the vehicle that transmits
the doctrine of Franco and that of the Catholic Church to her children. This suffocating
atmosphere markedly contrasted with the vivacious ambience of the Republic in which

women’s social reality was brightening with each freedom won.

49

The inauguration of the dictatorship in 1939 produced swift changes that affected
feminine identity. Ahnost immediately the regime retroacted the Civil Code of 1889, an
exceedingly oppressive series of articles that were archaic when ﬁrst established nearly
ﬁfty years earlier. Likewise, the regime targeted the liberal politics, abhorrent in their
perspective, in zones occupied by Republicans. As a result of the horroriﬁc changes, it
was as if overnight women were transported back ﬁve decades. No longer could a
woman seek divorce, abortion was punishable by severe penalties, and moreover, birth
control was deemed illegal. Essentially the women, her body, and her identity were at the
mercy of the dictatorship. The oppressive ideology of the regime legislated the female
body according to the interests of the state and the church23 . On one side, she was to be
the ‘angel del hogar’, responsible for the domestic sphere which entailed caring for
husband and having children. On the other, as a maternal vessel, it was hoped that she
was fertile so as to raise more soldiers for Franco and for God.

This oppressive environment denied women access not only to legal rights, jobs,
and equality, but also the ability to adopt other ideologies. More speciﬁcally, the
dictatorship reproduced and disseminated their doctrines on diverse ﬁonts so as to fully
penetrate the psyche of the Spaniard. One of the ways in which it achieved this was
through la Seccién Femenina. This faction representing the women in favor of Franco
distributed a magazine- intended for women - whose goal was to continually teach and
remind women of their place within society. In one particular issue the regime outlined

its ultra-traditional conception of gender roles “e1 niiio mirara a1 mundo, la niila mirara a]

 

2’ In 1937 the Catholic bishops collectively signed a letter stating their support of Franco and his military
coup against the Republic. The most enthusiastic supporters were Cardinal Goma and Cardinal Pla Daniel.
Pio XII additionally acknowledged the Catholic Church’s support of Franco. The support of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy elated Franco. Buttressed by the Church, Franco reinforced his ideology in
multiple spheres of social life.

50

hogar” (Riera 40). This slogan summarizes the life goals expected of each sex; the
possibilities for boys were endless, while girls’ domain was located within the four walls
of the home. This conﬁnement of women erased possibilities for higher education, jobs,
and visibility. Female identity in the dictatorship was rooted in consuming the edicts of
Franco and the Catholic Church: be a good wife and mother, which entailed producing
many offspring for Franco and God, and transmitting the ideals of the State and church.
With such regimented control and legislation over the female body, from reproduction to
education, woman fulﬁlled the role of the binary opposite of man — a lack”. In light of
this, it is surprising that prostitution was not legally prohibited until 1956”.

The Catholic Church and the Franco dictatorship obsessed over the natality rate.
To remedy this concern, both institutions worked together to promote an environment
conducive to the expansion of the population. To begin with, per Franco law, married
women were not to pursue a job. As such, they would conﬁne themselves to the home
where they could pursue endeavors considered worthy of their sex: child rearing. This
was reinforced by the abolishment of divorce, persecution of those desiring abortion, and
the prohibition of birth control. The regime even went so far as to reward and prize
procreation through the institution of “Dia de la Madre” on December 8th of the calendar

year. The two institutions further solidiﬁed their prosperous future through an agreement

 

2’ In April of 1942, the Minister of Education declared women unﬁt for higher education. He stated:
Mi opinién es que debe alejarse a la mujer de la Universidad, quiero decir que el sitio de
la mujer, en mi opinién, es el hogar. Y que por consiguiente, una orientacién cristiana y
auténticamente espaﬂola de la Enseilanza Superior ha de basarse en el supuesto de que
solo excepcionalmente debe la mujer orientarse hacia estudios universitarios. (Signo
1942)
The regime solemnly preached that women did not need an education if their purpose was to remain in the
home, married and pregnant. Nevertheless, the economic reality that faced women could not support the
lifestyle demanded by the regime. This forced women, who had little or no education, to work in stores, as
maids cleaning homes, and other poorly paid odd jobs.
25 This suggests and further supports the claim that under the Franco regime women and their bodies were a
means to an end, ﬁrlﬁlling the masculine order’s desire while at the same time, highly regulated and under
surveillance.

51

made in 1941 between the Vatican and Spanish govemmentz". The government
conceded that it would leave all responsibility for national education in the hands of the
church <<no se legislaria sobre materias mixtas o sobre aquellas que puedan interesar de
algr'rn modo a la Iglesia, sin previo acuerdo con la Santa Sede”(Gallego 138). As a result,
the educational system including its content was placed in the hands of the Catholic
Church.

Another political instrument employed by the regime to further manipulate the
birth rate was the Seccién Femenina”. This only female political group owed its creation
to Franco, as it served as a vehicle for the transmission of his doctrine. Riera states,
however, that this group predominantly functioned as the voice of the church “la Seccién
Femenina ﬁre mas una AcciOn Catélica reaccionaria y autoritaria que una organizacién de
estilo fascista” (43) indoctrinating young girls with traditional moral and social values.
Perhaps most notable is the explicit admission on part of the SecciOn F emenina to utter
obedience of the masculine libidinal order, “La SecciOn F emenina, respecto a sus jefes
tiene que tener una actitud de obediencia absoluta, como es siempre e1 papel de la muj er
en la Vida de sumisién a1 hombre” (Gallego 186).

As one could imagine, the social reality of life in Spain was tremendously
oppressed by the Franco regime. Nevertheless, during the mid-19503 the economic
realities facing the Spanish government echoed in very gradual transformations in
feminine identity. The economic model utilized by Franco - autarchy- resulted in the

impoverishment of the majority of Spanish citizens. This model based upon closed

 

2" Through the eyes of Franco and the Catholic Church, a prosperous future was equated to the institution
of marriage with the explicit intent upon having children. Consequently, both institutions would have a
greater number of followers.

7 The Seccién F emenina had a large inﬂuence especially in aspects of social welfare, although it never had
a very substantial membership. It was composed of 600,000 in 1939 and declined to 200,000 in 1959.

52

borders, complete isolation and self-sufﬁciency was deteriorating the social, political, and
most importantly economic well being of the country. In 1960, the country was largely
rural and agricultural, staggeringly behind in development and industry, “todavia el 43
por 100 vive en poblaciones de menos de 10.000 habitantes y un 41 por 100 de la
poblacién activa se concentra en el sector primario. Las condiciones de vida en los
hogares rurales son muy duras: solo un 37 por 100 tienen agua corriente y un 20 por 100
bano o ducha” (FOESSA 211). Due to the severe economic depression Franco was
forced to open, albeit it gradually, the doors to foreign investment and interests”. These
capitalist ventures produced radical transformations in the Spanish society yet these
alterations would still take longer to resonate among the female population.

The sociologist Amando de Miguel undertook the ﬁrst national survey of Spanish
youth entitled Encuesta sobre presupuestos mentales de la juventud espan'ola in 1960.
The purpose was to acquire information regarding all aspects of the Spanish youths’
lives. Amando de Miguel solicited their opinions on a myriad of themes a few being
their devotion to the Catholic Church, the institution of marriage, the importance of
friendship, their level of education, and their relationships with members of the opposite
sex. It is curious, though, that from a sample of 1731 participants, 1316 of them were

male”. The results, while not surprising, serve as evidence of the success of the

 

2" Due to the enormous deﬁcit and impoverished state of Spain, Franco instituted a Plan de Estabilizacidn,
a set of economic reforms intended to open up the economy to capitalist interests. Nevertheless, opening
the county to foreigners could potentially make the regime and its politics vulnerable. Hence, Franco
found a group — e1 Opus Dei — that would help him to achieve both goals: maintain the image of Catholic
Spain while promoting capitalistic interests. The ideology of Opus was exceedingly conservative and
connected with the Catholic Church. At the same time, the group promoted economic qualities such as
development, consumption, and efﬁciency.
29 The author justiﬁed this skewed representation stating:
El primer cuidado fue hacer un numero mayor de entrevistas masculinas. Es sabido que
la poblacibn fernenina de esta edad tienen opiniones metros formadas y consistentes y,
por tanto, ante muchos temas de opinibn los porcentajes de no contestacién es de esperar

53

propagandistic regime. Riera elaborates: “Las funciones de hombres y mujeres estan
claramente deﬁnidas. SOlo un 56,8 por 100 de los varones y un 60,4 por 100 de las
mujeres cree que hombres y mujeres deben toner los mismos derechos, y el 59,6 por 100
y el 71,6 por 100 respectivamente, piensa que debe recibir la misma educaciOn” (49).
Most shocking, perhaps, is their acceptance or indifference to this restrictive world. With
respect to the political economy, “A un 76 por 100 no les interesa practicamente nada la
politica; un 72,5 por 100 esta conforrne con lo que el Estado ha hecho por la juventud; la
falta de libertad parece no preocupar a casi nadie - un 2,2 por 100” (51).

If the Spanish economy found itself in dire straits at the end of the 1950’s, within
an eight year time span, the society had transformed at an accelerated pace’o. In only
eight years numerous evolutions occurred at diverse levels of society. If less than a
decade earlier indifference and apathy plagued the Spanish society (in particular the
students), Spain in the decade of the 608 was about activism: “Vivir el 68 era luchar

contra Franco”(60) 3 1. While the state was a primary target of the activists, the Catholic

 

que sean elevados. A esto se aﬂadia la diﬁcultad de encontrarse con un equipo de
entrevistadoras y sobre todo el problema de su desplazamiento a muchos pueblos. Por
otra parte, no se quiso prescindir totalmente de una representacién de muj eres y se
decidio conceder a1 cuestionario femenino una cuarta parta de las entrevistas (Amando de
Miguel 19)
His explanation, rooted in binary oppositions stemming from sexual difference, cites the feminine capacity
to understand is inferior to boys of the same age, the difﬁculty in having access to a female participant due
not only to the ‘fragility’ and suspicion associated with her gender but physical distance (there was a higher
concentration of girls in rural, harder to reach areas) as his reasons for the gender imbalance in the
sampling group. Nevertheless, it served to further rmrginalize the female and maintain her invisibility.
3° At this time, events occurring worldwide opened possibilities for progress and new patterns of thinking.
These social phenomena included major expansion of universities, the Vietnam War met with ﬁerce
opposition among United States students, and intense political upheaval in France.
3 This activism is attributed to many causes principally, though, the critical eye of the press. Newspapers,
while subjected to the scrutiny and censorship of the Ley Fraga, were the principal disseminators of
knowledge and ﬁghters for freedom. For instance,
Los medios de comunicacién (no TVE, claro esta) hablan de huelgas (aunque todavia se
utilicen los eufemismos de paros y de productores en lugar de obreros), de los juicios del
Tribunal de Orden Pr'rblico, de las multas a la prensa, de los continuos incidentes
estudiantiles que son controlados por el regimen con detenciones, expulsiones, cierres y
en enero del afio siguiente, con el Estado de Excepcién. (Riera 60)

54

Church, being an extension of the regime, was the other. The Church, however, found
itself in a precarious position, as there was pressure for it to separate from the Franco
regime. As such the church was divided: there were bishOps that continued praising the
efﬁciency and effectiveness of the dictatorship and yet dissension was growing among
the priests seen through their support of those persecuted by Franco “. . .los curas se
manifestaban y las parroquias cobijaban asarnbleas y reuniones de todos los grupos
ilegales y perseguidos por la dictadura” (60).

While this was occurring in Europe, Spain in particular, experienced instabilities
in population density. This occurred on two fronts in Spain: migration from rural
pueblos to larger cities as well as population shifts from poorer regions to industrialized
ones. The result of these population shifts removed Spain from its predominantly rural,
agricultural status propelling economic growth through its incipient industry. It is
Signiﬁcant that with these transitions (movements from rural sectors to city living and
shifts from agricultural economy to industry) Spain not only witnessed better living
conditions but also became a contender in the society of consumption. For the ﬁrst time,
Spanish citizens were owners of television sets, took vacations, ediﬁed large shopping
centers, and were recipients of massive foreign tourism. These changes brought new
dimensions to the collective Spaniard identity. While on a political level, the regime
sought to differentiate itself through propagandistic measure such as the slogan ‘Spain is
different ’, it became obvious that the ofﬁcial country (established through Franco’s
protocol) and the real Spain (as socially lived and experienced) were extraordinarily

distinct.

55

During this time period, proliﬁc advances were made directly affecting Spanish
women. The economy in its upward spiral was forced by sheer necessity to open its
doors to female employment. As a result, Fuero del Trabajo, the ideological instrument
employed by Franco to keep women out of the work force and in the home, was unable to
continue with this effort. The most notable sector affected by female employment was
“servicios, con un crecimiento muy notable de empleadas de oﬁcinas y vendedoras” (62).
Likewise, there was a marked augment in the number of young females (aged 20 to 24)
entering the workforce. In 1960, 28 percent of women in this age group maintained
employment outside of the home. By 1968 this number had grown astonishingly, yet
there does remain discord among the actual number. In either case, one notes the deﬁnite
inﬁltration of the workforce by women; according the census in 1970 the number was 39
percent, however, the EPA projects a higher number, tallying 47 percent of this age group
with new economic resources (Riera). While the ofﬁcial discourse of the regime did not
coincide with these new opportunities, the brutal reality required that the woman work:

...la dura realidad de nuestros salarios y la necesidad de alimentar a proles
aim numerosas obligaron a muchas muj eres a buscar trabaj os fuera de
casa. Para ello tuvieron que veneer la resistencia de sus padres o esposos,
aunque contaron a su favor con la situacién de pleno empleo que atrevesé
nuestra economia durante aquellos aﬁos. (Larumbe 140)
Despite the economic necessity as well as opportunities that existed, the regime
continued to disseminate its ofﬁcial patriarchal conception (propaganda) of the virtuous
woman that was reinforced by the continuation of awards given to boost the birth rate,

heavy penalties on abortion, and the continuing illegality of birth control. The regime,

56

having to come to terms with the fact that women were needed in the work place,
instituted rules to differentiate women from men. For instance, on July 22“d of 1961, the
State enacted the Ley sobre Derechos Politicos, Profesionales y de Trabajo that regulated
the labor rights of women. The inherent dichotomy — demand for salaried workers
juxtaposed with the patriarchal prejudices of the head of the family who would prefer to
work multiple jobs, as opposed to permitting his wife or daughter to enter the workforce
— resulted in limited female participation and activity in the labor force. The lack of the
women in the labor force may be explained through consideration of sociological and
cultural reasons; the Spanish ideology conceived of the woman as a lack within the
masculine economy. This general inadequacy of female participation ﬁrrther served to
reify hegemonic norms while bolstering the value of the masculine. Larumbe elaborates:
Esta <<ausencia>> de la mujer del mundo laboral, incluso de aquella que
posesia una titulacién que la capacitaba profesionalmente, 5610 se explica
por razones psicosociales, propias de una sociedad que considera o utiliza
a la esposa o hija que no trabaja como muestra inequivoca de la buena
situacién familiar y de la capacidad del varOn para garantizarla en
exclusiva. De este modo y al mismo tiempo se reforzaba y se proyectaba
socialrnente su caracter protector y su virilidad. (141)
As evidenced by Larumbe’s comments, while the 1960s was auspicious for the initial
mobilization of women, there was an engrained hostility towards the possibility of a new
social order that incorporated the female subject. Not only did the State work through
legal means to limit woman’s labor rights, the press and media portrayed women in a

manner unsuitable for the workforce. The media disseminated popular images of

57

women; two in particular are: “la <<l‘ia Leo>>, que anunciaba el caldo concentrado, y
una desparnpanante rubia que, montada en un caballo blanco, incitaba a los hombres a
beber coﬂac, una de cuyas marcas consideraba que ese licor era sclo casa de hombres”.
(Larumbe 148) The disseminated image of the woman as an object or an animal not
only ﬁmctioned to nullify female subjectivity, but also further isolated her from the
workforce due to the explicit devaluation of woman. A close reading of Amando de
Miguel’s survey of the Spanish youth during this decade uncovers the manifestation of
the regime’s sentiment towards woman. For instance, on the university level, female
students represent only 30 percent of the student body, a statistic illustrating Spain’s
archaic sociopolitical posture”. Another inequality prevalent in the education system (at
the primary level) was the distinct formation based upon sex; the education of girls was
overwhelmingly weighted by religion. Perhaps this may be attributed to the fact that girls
were still leaving the educational system at an early level. According to Amando’s
survey, “alas l6 aﬂos solo estudiaban 40.700 y a los 21 10.335”( 160). This statistic
clearly demonstrates that one out of every four girls continues to obtain a higher
education. While that number is quite meager, it is a substantial improvement ﬁ'om the
past decade. The cause of the attrition rate was varied: some left school to work and
others to help out at home, waiting until their future husband appears to take them away
to work in his home”.

Perhaps even more illustrative of the women’s social environment was the survey

undertaken in 1967 titled Habla la mujer published by the group Cuademos para el

 

’2 In 1970, the university system in France witnessed nearly an equal gender division among its student
body with 44.5 percent being female.

’3 It must be noted that those whom left the education system for employment did so provisionally. That is,
once these girls married and/or had children, they left the workforce.

58

Dialogo. The survey consisted of mailing 2000 questionnaires of which only a pittance,
399, was answered. While the participant base was not extensively large, it does yield
interesting facts that reveal the moral and religious climate as well as the values
inculcated in women“. “Un 99 por 100 se considera creyente y un 54,6 por 100 ha
estudiado en colegios religiosos de los que parece que ha salido muy satisfecha” (Riera
65). Perhaps the most salient results of the survey are the fact that not even one half of
those surveyed believed that women were equal to men and moreover, “un 22,5 por 100
acepta sin reservas que la mujer casada trabaja fuera del hogar. . .el 62,9 por 100
considera e1 matrimonio la meta ideal de su vida; e1 37.5 por 100 cree que nunca debe
perrnitirse el divorcio; un 57,3 por 100 considera que no es licito evitar tener muchos
hijos” (Riera 65). While the results reveal a traditional mentality, slowly the beliefs and
attitudes are evolving.

Conscientes las mujeres del Estado espaﬁol de que ningr'm ser tiene
derecho a realizarse a costa de otro, y de que la falta de libertades ha
supuesto su marginacién de la vida social en todos los niveles, aﬁnnan
que para que la muj er pueda mayoritariamente adquirir una conciencia
clara de sus problemas especiﬁcos, y como ser humano, debe participar
activarnente en la consecucién de las libertades democraticas. (Resolucién
de las I jomadas por la Liberacién de la Muj er, Madrid 6-8 de diciembre,
1975 qtd. in Riera 68)

With the death of Francisco Franco on November 20th 1975, dreams of liberation became

a legal reality for Spaniards —- and in particular women. The following time period

 

3‘ This survey was posterior to Amado de Miguel’s Encuesta de Juventud 1960. It is difﬁcult to corrrpare
the two surveys because the participant ages for the two were not consistent.

59

known as the Transition saw the installation of democracy resulting in widespread
aspirations of freedom. In this new atmosphere, ﬁnally the word sex was not taboo; no
longer did women have to secretly purchase birth control. Nevertheless, this victory
came with some unforeseen negative changes. From 1975-1981 the country experienced
stagnations in the economy leading some to believe that they were no better off under the
democracy than they were under the dictatorship. For example, the unemployment rate
among the Spanish population was 6.2 percent (7.1 percent among women); in total
832,400 citizens found themselves in this situation, 274,200 of them women (Riera 78-
79). Interestingly, though, the economic and political instability of the country
contributed directly to the rebirth and development of the feminist movement with
Spain”. Unlike other European countries, the ﬁght for feminism in Spain did not have
the mobilization from Spanish women predecessors. None of the women’s groups from
the Second Republic survived and during the regime, women’s social reality suffered an
anachronistic recess when Franco re-instituted the Civil Code of 188936. Hence, the
resurgence of feminism within Spain fundamentally was protagonized by a new
generation of women.

While the feminist movement in Spain maintained diverse goals, the modus
operandi was the need for the recognition of equality among the sexes. According to
Larumbe:

Desde su ori gen, nuestro feminismo se caracterizo por una acusada
fragmentacién organizativa y un marcado disenso teOrico, rasgos que

pueden inducir a una connotaciOn negativa, si bien debemos tener presente

 

’5 The unstable political environment gave way to a substantial level of tolerance and permissiveness.
3° The principal mobilizers of the worrren’s movement in the 19305 had either died or were living in exile.
Only a few remained as testament to the past social reality: Maria Telo and Lili Alvarez, a suffragist.

60

que esa enorrne diversidad de opciones y esa abigarrada pluralidad de

enfoques teOricos fueron las que le dieron mayor riqueza. (Larumbe 161)
From the perspective of Lidia F alcOn, a signiﬁcant ﬁgure to the upstart of the movement,
afﬁrms that the feminist movement began in Spain in the year 1975. In large part this
emergence was attributed to other social movements concurrently transpiring within
Spain such as: “e1 movimiento sindical, e1 movimiento vicinal, e1 inicio del movimiento
de consumidores, los movirnientos ecologista, paciﬁsta, que alcanzan su auge a1
comenzar la década de los 80” (Falcon 15). The feminist movement emerged as a result
of diverse leftist tendencies and subversive movements manifesting in the later years of
the dictatorship; similarly, it organized itself as an alternative movement “enﬁ'entado a
partidos politicos, autOnomo y revolucionario” (16). It is of great signiﬁcance that the
United Nations declared the year of 1975 as the International Year of the Woman. This
initiative had an international character as it sparked numerous campaigns, conferences,
and feminist groups. The women in Spain, while still subject to the dictatorship, took
advantage of the opportunity to form various feminist groups, engage in debates and
collaborate on work that would be presented at an international convocation. Perhaps not
surprising, the Seccién Femenina strongly desired to charge themselves with the direction
of the project; nevertheless, progressive women challenged their request as they did not
want the situation of the women in Spain to be represented by one of Franco’s
instruments. Hence, other feminists groups such as the MDM (Movimiento Democratico
de Muj eres) spearheaded the efforts to portray Spanish woman’s reality from a very

distinct optic.

61

On November 20‘”, 1975, the dictator Francisco Franco died and two days later
Prince Juan Carlos was sworn in as the new head of state. In 1976, the feminist
movement blossomed into a myriad of organizations ranging in sizes, geographic
location, and principles. It was not until 1987 that the Instituto de la Mujer headed an
investigation into the actual breadth of the organizations that composed the movement.
Their ﬁndings revealed a total of 600 groups, 60 of which deﬁned their organizations
explicitly as feminist (Riera)”. “El MLM tuvo en su fragmentacién, viveza y caducidad
sus principales caracteristicas, aunque todas estas organizaciones y grupos actuaron bajo
un comr'm denominador que los convirtio en inﬂuyentes: la conquista de los derechos de
la mujer y la denuncia de su opresiOn” (Riera 162). The diversity among these women’s
groups was astonishing and widespread. Organizations ranged from self help groups to
associations with a particular focus, such as Mujeres Divorciadas. There also were
groups favoring speciﬁc foci, such as the Colectivo Cine Clase (CCC); others deﬁned
themselves through sexual orientation, such as those created by gays and lesbians, and
ﬁnally those associated with political parties such as the Asociacién Democratica de la
Muj er (ADM). The existence of these various groups, each with their distinct focus,
illuminates the complex and effervescent feminist movement in contemporary Spain.
With respect to the various feminist groups within Spain, two currents may be illustrated:
feminismo socialista or feminismo de igualdad and feminismo radical or feminismo de
diferencia. Feminismo socialista identiﬁes with liberal political parties and leftist groups.

The groups most representative of this current are the MDM (Movimiento Democratico

 

’7 The political dynamics of these women’s groups manifested in organizations based upon a plurality of
voices as they rejected any form of univocal leadership, deeming it patriarchal and machista. As such, they
rarely had an established, stable executive board or a rigorous agenda. Moreover, the women’s
organizations did not charge a membership fee, opting to rely on personal donations for economic stability.
Unfortunately, this system proved problematic as many groups suffered from lacking of funding.

62

de la Mujer), ADM (Asociacién Democratica de la Mujer), and the ULM (UniOn para la
Liberacién de la Muj er). F eminismo radical, on the other hand, was identiﬁed with
independent feminist groups that did not maintain political afﬁliations or party ties. This
wave was composed of groups that espoused the ideology that under the present
patriarchy, woman is unable to be represented. LAMAR (Lucha Antiautoritaria de

Muj eres Antipatriarcales Revolucionarias), created in 1976 from former members of the
Colectivo de Barcelona, is exemplary of the current of feminismo radical.

The period ranging from 1975-1981 was momentous in terms of recognition and
advancement of the Spanish Feminist Movement. The evolutions that transpired
effectuated on an organizational level as well as an ideological plane. To begin with, the
Partido Feminista (which had its origen in los Colectivos Feministas and evolved to
create the PF) was legalized in December of 1979. The creation of this political party is,
perhaps, the most organized expression of feminism, a minoritory movement within this
period. On other levels, per the Constitution of 1978, women were considered the equals
of men, established in articles 14, 32, and 35.1. Likewise, women were gaining ground
through the passing of three reformatory laws of the Penal Code. These laws eliminated
the ﬁgure and treatment of the woman as a passive victim and evil inﬂuence. The
principal reform was the Estatuto de los Trabajadores that expanded maternity leave to
sixteen weeks and established measures to favor equality in the treatment of women in
the workforce. The other two legislative reforms that beneﬁted the woman were the
equality of rights within matrimony and the ability to own and exercise control over

familiar elements such as the administration and disposition of common goods.

63

In the ﬁrst elections after the establishment of the democratic State, different
political parties created agendas to garner the vote of the diverse feminist groups. For
instance, the democratic right recognized the equality among man and woman, while
promoting politics that increased women’s access to education and culture. The PSOE,
on the other hand, considered the demands of the feminist groups and promised to create
a coeducational system based on equality for all levels of education. In 1983, the
government of the PSOE created the Instituto de la Mujer with the objective of
“<<desarrollar el principio de no discrirninacién previsto en la Constituci6n>>” (Instituto
de la Mujer 1995). The creation of this institution afforded women a claim to space,
upheld their convictions, and furthermore, allowed them to establish and practice their
own administration. Curiously, the triumph of the left in 1982 marked the decrease in
participation and organization of feminist groups in Spain. This decade yielded
disillusionment on the part of the woman, as she was legally an equal, yet in many cases,
it remained only a paper truth. In 1992, only 30% of the workforce was composed of
women (Instituto de la Mujer 1995); moreover, women were not paid the same as men
According to the study undertaken by the Instituto de la Muj er (La mujer en crfras, 1982-
1 992):

<<los salarios de las mujeres son inferiores a los que reciben los hombres
en un 20%. Ademas, a medida que aumenta la edad, las diferencias
salariales también aumentan. Mientras que en los varones generalrnente el
desarrollo de su carrera professional esta intirnamente relacionado con la
edad, en las mujeres no se conﬁnna esta tendencia>>. (qtd. Instituto de la

Mujer 1995)

64

These numbers and inequalities among salaries further evidence the contradiction
between reality and the ConstituciOn. Men are considered wiser and of more value as
they age; women, on the other hand, depreciate with age. Another more recent example
that patently illustrates this claim is the non-renewal of the contract of a female employee
at the Ministerio de Cultura due to the fact that she was pregnant (Instituto de la Mujer
1995). In this vein, the law may have reﬂected a new social reality, yet to a large extent,
it remained theoretical, as mentalities were not so quick to adapt to the political
transformations. Riera cites various social realities and comments made by women of
this decade that underline the continuity of traditional ideas and conventions:
De vez en cuando aparecen atisbos del pasado: una violacién casi
justiﬁcada por un juez; la obligatoriedad de ser mujer para ir de au pair a
un pais determinado; unas trabaj adoras en huelga porque <<legahnente>>
se les paga menos que a los hombres por hacer las mismas tareas. . .Ahora
la discriminacio'n es mds diﬁtsa, mds interiorizada, menos estridente. El
listo'n se ha movido pero sigue estando ahi. (106)
The last years of the 19803 accelerated the bewilderment of the position of female
subjectivity, but at the same time this epoch provided clarity for the need for reformation
of values. As ofﬁcial feminism appeared late in Spain, as compared with the United
States, Great Britain, and Australia, international models served as a guide for the
development and strengthening of the movement with this country. Valiente Fernandez
afﬁrms: “. . .las inﬂuencias intemacionales desempeﬁaron un papel no despreciable,

sobre todo como modelos de inspiracién para quienes impulsaron e1 nacimiento de las

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primeras instituciones de este tipo” (3 8). Utilizing international frameworks, feminism
developed in Spain, yet to this day encounters obstacles rooted in machista mentality.
Ha de tenerse en cuenta que en la actualidad en Espaﬁa las feministas y las
fem6cratas hacen frente a lo que Boneparth (1980:4) denomino “e1 lujo de
la oposicién difusa”, el cual aparece cuando “uno de los mayores
problemas del movimiento (ferrrinista) es ser tomado en serio” (Valiente
Fernandez 38)
In this context, women, while deemed equals, are faced with the issue of agency and
validity.
As previously mentioned, there continues to exist different feminisms within
Spain as well as internationally. The diverse groups representing the various feminisms
establish their own foci, yet at the nucleus associate for the liberty and autonomy of the
woman. A contemporary polemic among Spanish feminists manifests in the current
debate among feminism of equality (feminismo de la igualdad o feminismo socialista)
and feminism of difference (feminismo de la diferencia o feminismo radical). Both
branches of feminism arduously work toward consciousness raising and the establishment
of laws to better social conditions on behalf of the woman. Their primary difference rests
upon how each collectivity envisions emancipation.
Since the Enlightenment, the theme of equality has garnered abundant attention.
Feminists of equality utilize as their conceptual ﬁ'amework the tenets of equality as
established by masculine philosophers in the Enlightenment. This branch contends that

equality will be achieved once we comprehend the notion of the ‘universal subject’.

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Their belief is that in an androcentric society, wiping away sexual difference, women can
incorporate into the patriarchal model and be an equal.

We may bridge the concept of feminismo de la diferencia in Spain with Western
feminist theory, in particular that of sexual difference. Feminists of difference in Spain,
paralleling in many aspects the ideas of the Italian philosopher Rosi Braidotti, maintain
that the only manner to achieve equality and hence evolution is through revolution based
upon sexual difference. Their politics involves a complete rejection of representation
under the masculine libidinal order because of the explicit binary opposition:
man/woman, subject/other. According to Luce Irigaray in Speculum, “Mujer es un
sustantivo comr'm para el cual no se puede deﬁnir una identidad” (23). Hence, the model
will never yield equality because the woman cannot obtain subjectivity, she is always an
absence. The question they propose to feminists of equality is, then, how can Woman be
an equal in the patriarchal model if she is unrepresentable? Despite numerous
manifestations and the installation of new laws, woman cannot be emancipated within the
very paradigm that rejects her as a subject, relegating her to a position of alterity. In sum,
feminists of difference view the politics of feminists of equality as assimilation into the
male symbolic order that ultimately is a form of colonization.

Through history woman has been the other to man in a model based upon
masculine hegemony. The patriarchy has imposed a symbolic order that essentialized
human beings into man and woman, each sex endowed with particular, speciﬁc natures.
Even Hegel afﬁrmed: “el hombre piensa naturalmente segun lOgica, o, mas bien, la

lOgica constituye su misma naturaleza” 38 (Sendon de LeOn 39). This dogma of this

 

3’ Aristotle, the founding father of Western philosophy, ediﬁed the masculine symbolic order based on
contradiction and exclusion. Within this order, as deﬁned by Aristotle, masculinity is equated to logic and

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symbolic order has placed importance on knowledge a priori, yet this logic functions only
within this system of representation; a logic that prevails over reality. Feminists of
difference such as Sendon de Lec'm, within Spain as well as internationally, have tried to
unveil and subsequently extinguish this logic of thought composed of a system of
relationships and codes. Through uncovering the exclusion inherent in this structure, this
movement seeks an alternative epistemological ideology; one which is not binary, but in
the words of Sendén de Le6n, “analégica, es decir, que reﬂeje la realidad y no una
abstraccién forzada de esa realidad” (40). Woman is not comprised of a singular essence
nor nature; she is multiple and dynamic and for that reason a symbolic order must be
created that introduces the variable of sexual difference into all facets of life. The
variable to be introduced is not gender, which is a colonization of sex, but rather sexual
difference. In sum, to achieve emancipation on behalf of women, difference must be the
foundation for the establishment of new paradigm based upon the plurality of ‘woman’;
only through radical revolution can occur the necessary transformations for the

realization of the female subject.

Cultures of Consumption and the Female Subject

The nomadic female subject - dislocated in the male centered power structure-
shifts and seeks alternative spaces through cultures of consumption. In light of Rosi
Braidotti’s theory of sexual-difference, I propose that ﬂuctuating states of culture, based
on redeﬁnition through transforming modes of consumption, support a view of the

nomadic self.

 

power. The woman, as its binary opposite, is considered absence and in Aristotle’s words ‘ﬁm varOn
castrado”. (Sendbn de LeOn 40)

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With the advent of capitalism and the widespread technologization of global
economies in the 19503, all but the poorest groups (Bocock 21) saw the emergence of
mass consumption within society. With the end of mass industrialization and
urbanization, there has been an augment of employment in service and professional jobs,
while a decrease in the manufacturing industry. The era of mass production or ‘Fordism’
(termed by Gramsci in 1971 due to mass car production by Henry Ford) opened up
possibilities for individual production. According to Spink, these changes were the
catalysis for the growth in individualism. Moreover, he contends that political alterations
since the 1970s have placed a heavier emphasis on private consumption. R. Bocock in
Consumption attributes the birth of consumer society to stabilization in socio-economic
factors within Western countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and France,
stemming from technological progress and globalization. In accord with Bocock, with
heightened economic means, after providing for basic needs, consumers became aware of
luxury objects such as televisions, stereos, cars, and vacations to which they now had
access - needs that are not intrinsic but cultural. Bocock also notes that groups deemed
poor (due to income or socio-econorrric grouping) often did possess goods and take an
active part in this novel era of consumption. In his analysis of mass consumption,
Bocock parallels these changes occurring in society with alterations echoing at a
worldwide level. He suggests that if the term ‘modern’ denotes an urban, industrial
society, in which socio-economic position was the determining factor of people’s lives,
their identity, then ‘post-modem’ implies a post industrial capitalist social structure in
which previous markers of stability/identity have been displaced. Going ﬁrrther,

Bauman, in his investigations on postmodernity and identity, afﬁrms that identities in

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postmodern situations become more ﬂuid, ﬂoating around in a state of ﬂux. The decline
in mass industrialization has been countered by the augment of employment opportunities
in the service and professional sectors, due to loss of jobs in the manufacturing industry.
Concurrently, the age of mass production replaced and gravely reduced individual
production. According to Spink, the rise of individualism stems from these precise
changes that occurred in the economic sector. In relation, postrnodemists point to a rising
pattern of consumption as opposed to occupation or class as the decisive factor in
establishing identity.

Stemming from sweeping transformations in technologies and globalization,
consumerism has moved to the forefront not only in the lives of citizens but also has
altered identity construction. According to Bocock: “Since the 1950s and more
particularly during the 1970s and 19805, new kinds of groups have emerged for whom
consumption plays a central role in their way of life” (27). In his study of the dynamics
of these new consumer groups, Bocock underlines the importance of the internal
dynamics, stating that it is these factors that have played a role in the social construction
of a sense of identity. While the external features of these groups were also new, for
instance age, socio-economic, gender, he points to identity as a process which “may make
use of consrnnable items such as shoes, designer trainers, clothing, music, sports
activities, and belonging to clubs or soccer clubs” (29). Identity, then, is negotiated by
belonging to particular ‘imagined communities’, anived upon by the consumption and re-
appropriation of accoutrements. Bocock believes that in postmodern societies, identities

are in a constant state of ﬂux; as such, individuals maneuver freely from one cultural

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group to another, mixing and matching what formerly were distinct categories. He

afﬁrms:

Under modernity, popular music, jazz, country and western, reggae

and classical music had relatively distinct audiences, however, under
post-modernity they have become mixed. Other forms of style
consciousness in clothing, cars, interior decor, television viewing, types of
food -— which in modernity were clearly deﬁned as distinct patterns for
speciﬁc social status groups- have become more mixed up under post-

modernity. (81)

Made patent through Bocock’s afﬁrmation, there has been a transformation in the

negotiation and articulation of identity rooted in cultural shifts. Ceasing to be static and

principally determined at birth, social and cultural evolutions - rooted in political and

economic alterations- afforded the subject the opportunity to construct a selfhood that in

accord with desire, and moreover, is constantly in ﬂux. Furthermore, studies undertaken

by market research ﬁrms during the 1980s resulted in a modiﬁcation in the manner of

looking at consumption and by extension consumers. Instead of linking consrunption

patterns to socio-economic levels, market researchers began to look at these paradigms

through the optic of life stages. In The Body of Consumer Culture Mike Featherstone

argues:

The term life-style is currently in vogue. While the term has a more
restricted sociological meaning in reference to the distinctive style of life
of speciﬁc status groups, within contemporary consumer culture it

connotes individuality, self expression, and a stylistic self-consciousness.

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Ones body, clothes, speech, leisure pastimes, eating and drinking
preferences, home, car, choice of holidays, etc. are to be regarded as
indicators of the individuality of taste and sense of style of the
owner/consumer. In contrast to the designation of the 1950s as an era of
grey confonnism, a time of mass consumption, changes in production
techniques, market segmentation and consruner demand for a wider range
of products, are often regarded as making possible greater choice (the
management of which becomes an art form) not only for the youth of the
post 1960s generation, but increasingly for the middle aged and the
elderly. . .we are moving towards a society without ﬁxed status groups in
which the adoption of styles of life (manifest in choice of clothes, leisure
activities, consumer goods, bodily disposition) which are ﬁxed to speciﬁc
groups have been surpassed. (83)
While many postmodern scholars have offered analyses claiming that society cannot be
categorized as a consumer culture, other authors claim that in contemporary society
people seek the realization of self and the formation of identity through lifestyles founded
in consumption practices; the dynamic negotiation between consumption choices and
respective lifestyles delineates with precision individual and collective identity. There is
a culture of consumption, or more precisely, cultures of consumption that categorize
social groups. As culture ﬁagments into multiple sectors, there do exist diverse cultures
of consumption through which people participate in society and infuse their lives with

meaning.

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In our postmodern era, social connections and networking do not just occur within
the professional sphere, but rather appear to stem from mutual interests such as lifestyle
and aspects of consumption like fashion or music. It is not that these elements eclipse
other aspects of importance in society but, as Mark Gottdiener states, “They form
commodiﬁed milieus based on the production of material goods within which the various
social groupings in society that differ by lifestyle, location, race, gender, age, and class
carry out daily life” (17).

Per Celia Lury in Consumer Culture, “One of the most important ways in which
people relate to each other socially is through the mediation of things” (1). This
declaration is of fundamental importance to the exploration of identity vis-a-vis
participation in economics of consumption. Made explicit, Lury highlights the intimate
and complex meanings we forge through our interaction with the material realm. The
author gives the term “material culture” to the study of animate-inanimate relationships
as well as to the study of things-in-use. “Material culture” is a propitious term because it
implies the existence of active relationships among the material and the cultural realms.
It is, moreover, helpful to consider consumption in these terms due to the etymology of
the word itself. The term “consumption” emerged in the Middle Ages and meant
‘devouring’ or ‘eating up’. Speciﬁcally, in that time period, the word referred to diseases
such as syphilis and tuberculosis. In that understanding, the subject is passive, an object
to be acted upon and ravaged. Likewise, consumption is related to the eating and
metabolizing of food, a deﬁnition that also renders the subject passive. However, when
considered in the realm of material culture, consumption becomes a form of

communication to the self and to others, through which we as consumers navigate ﬂuidly

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the landscape of our identity. Consumption as utilized in consumer culture, through the
optic of the material, suggests a transformation, or “the manner in which people convert
things to ends of their own” (Strathern 10). Adela Cortina in For una ética del consumo
afﬁrms this concept:
El consumo es mucho mas que un momento en esa cadena de la actividad
econémica <<producci6n>>, intercambio, distribucién, consumo>>; es
incluso mucho mas que un medio de supervivencia. Es una forma de
relacionarse los seres humanos, que intercarnbian regalos, van juntos al
cine o a un concierto. Es una forma de comunicarme a mi misma y a los
demas que he triunfado en la vida y por eso llevo un Mercedes 0 compro
la ropa en Valentino, que no he fracasado como otros. Es una forma de
demostrar a los presuntuosos vecinos, colegas, conocidos que soy por lo
menos igual que ellos, porque yo también me voy del viaje a1 Caribe. Es
una forma de sentirme yo misma en la ropa que he elegido, la casa, los
muebles, haciendo caso a través de ellos a1 consejo dc Pindaro <<Llega a
ser la que eres>>. (13)
As Cortina signals consumption must be considered beyond the scope of its relationship
to the economy and production. She elaborates upon its intimate signiﬁcance within the
daily life of individual; through consumption, we negotiate and re-conﬁgure codes
rendering the body legible to the mass. Thus, consumption responds to various
motivations and social beliefs such that the act of consuming can be considered an
integral part of human existence. This investigation posits that consumption practices are

more profound and complex than the mere display of superiority and success in life, as

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Cortina seems to suggest: “Es una forma de comunicarme a mi misma y a los demas que
he triunfado en la vida y por eso llevo un Mercedes 0 compro la ropa en Valentino, que
no he fracasado como otros” (13). While recognizing the fundamental importance of
consumption to identity, Cortina also purports, building upon Veblen’s theories in
Conspicuous Consumption, that consumption is based upon the desire to imitate the
bourgeois, the elite. Perhaps that may be true for some, nevertheless, the process of
identity formation is much more complex and involved, engendering a navigation,
confection, and transmission of codes and images to the masses. These practices serve to
metarnorphose and signify the body (while rendering it legible to the masses) according
to individual desire. According to Finkelstein, “In a culture where the possession and
control of goods and services are highly valued, transforming the body into a commodity
which can be used for the display of coveted items becomes a social goal in itself” (5).
Through consumption, the body is inscribed or written, and as such it embodies a set of
codes, some reﬂecting exclusionary practices and others revealing the opposite. As the
body becomes texturized through the consumption of material goods, it concurrently is
made decipherable through the production of meaning that it transmits. Thus, cultures of
consrunption characterize social groupings in which the act of consumption itself is not
viewed as a passive mode of behavior.

Having elaborated upon theories of consumption and the fundamental role of
cultures of consumption in the formation of subjectivity, it is important to lend space to a
cautionary discussion of the complexities of this concept as well as the divisive theories
regarding consumption and emancipation. To begin with, consumption and subject

formation are slippery notions. Through consuming an object, experience, memory, etc,

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the subject appropriates the good while assigning it meaning; this interaction produces
meaning and identity. As such, it is an active process. Nevertheless, it is impossible to
view consumption unilaterally as an empowering experience; as will be elaborated upon
later, at times consumption practices may result in contradictory realities and
consequently, in an unhealthy, inert subjectivity. This, however, is not solely the
culpability of consumption, but rather how the individual appropriates the good. It is the
argument of this dissertation that through consumption practices, the subject appropriates
a good, produces and transmits meaning; as such, it is an active and dynamic identity
construction (individual and collective) process that does also have liberatory potential,
not rooted in class, but rather a molecular evolution of the female subject. This is arrived
upon by way of a contemplation of experiences, ﬂeshing through of encounters, and
nomadic movements of the subject manifesting in the dynamic multiplicity of female
subjectivity.

There has been much critique about the existence of the liberatory potential
offered by consumption practices. The attack on consumption began with Marx and his
severe critique of this system, which in his opinion represented a breach in the course of
history and a movement towards a profane modern world steeped in values of production,
distribution, and the consumption of commodities. As quoted in Best and Kellner, Marx
afﬁrms: “A commodity appears, at ﬁrst sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood.
Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical
subtleties and theological niceties” (Best and Kellner 50). In his line of argumentation,
Marx asserts that the commodity existed prior to the inception of capitalism; however, its

meaning and role in the lives of human beings and social values did not carry the same

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signiﬁcance. He maintains that the system of capitalism places at the forefront the glory
of the economy and subsumes while manipulating all aspects of social existence. In his
analysis of capitalism, he traces three fundamental yet differing stages: Middle Ages,
early capitalist period, and a highly developed era of commodiﬁcation. In the ﬁrst stage,
he asserts that only when there was surplus in production — that which would be
nonessential to sustain simple needs — was bartered; in the second phase, the sphere of
industrial goods entered the realm of exchange. The last era — that of commodiﬁcation —
represented a time:
When everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object
of exchange, of trafﬁc and could be alienated. This is the time
when. . .virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. — when
everything ﬁnally passed into commerce. It is the time of general
corruption, of universal venality, or to speak in terms of political
economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a
marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest
value. (Marx and Engels Collected Works: Vol VI 113-114)
Through an explanation of the trajectory of capitalism, Marx arrives at the conclusion
that every good (including person) has a price, and in his opinion, this commodiﬁcation
results in the loss of personanl integrity, the absence of all that is hrunan. To a certain
extent, his statement anticipates the generation of consumer society and its importance to
our everyday life. However, turning the focus away Item the potential symbiotic and
meaningful relationship among the subject and commodity, or object, Marx asserts that

the object arrives at the complete and utter domination of the subject. Instead of

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analyzing the potential for meaning making and creation, Marx posited that production —
the birth of objects at the expense of human labor — only served to degrade the human:
The more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more
values he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the
better formed his product, the more deformed the worker; the more
civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the mightier
labour becomes, the duller becomes the worker and the more he becomes
nature’s bondsman” (Tucker 73).
Marx outlines a vicious cycle rooted in the efforts of the worker. He asserts that the
success that a worker achieves converts the subject into a fraud, living a distorted
existence. In his perspective, the work and time invested in production by the human was
akin to alienation or “loss of [human] reality”, the ultimate consequence being the
dehumanization of man: “Man. . .no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his
animal functions. . .and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything
but an animal” (74). Within the cycle of capitalism, he posits that man is animal and can
be nothing but this ﬁguration due to the beastly nature inherent in the system and man’s
need to constantly perform for meager pay. Thus, Marx contends that a system
buttressed by capitalism quashes the potential for creativity, imagination, and revolution.
He attributes this to the deformation and debilitation of individual and social values,
incamating the ugliness that lies at the nucleus of capitalism.
Marx initiated a heroic battle against what be perceived to be the evils of

capitalism. As he insightfully understood, the material realm captivates humans as

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evidenced through the vigorous relationship among this world and the individual as well
as collectivity.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws
all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of
its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all
Chinese walls. . .It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the
bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls
civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one
word, it creates a world after its own image. (Marx and Engels Communist
Manifesto 9)
According to his theories, fundamental to capitalism are the assimilation of all cultures to
the Western adaptation, the erasure of tradition, and the instilling of the desire to emulate
the bourgeois class. While Marx, through his intrepid endeavor, utilized this trajectory to
rouse the masses against capitalism and its dynamics, as witnessed through the past
century, consumption has not only increased but has become “a central register of
selﬂrood” (Twitchell 49). His theory on the relationship between capitalism and humans
stultiﬁes a coherent reading of subjectivity and the manner in which the subject actively
engages with the material realm. Examining the model posited by Marx, the subject —
consumer — is always a victim of the manipulations of the machine — capitalism.
Furthermore, this cyclical theory assrunes that the individual is not free to elect, but rather
eternally subjugated to the whims of the capitalist economy, and as such are mere pawns

of the system. This, again, neglects to consider the potential for individual determination

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and the creation of a system of communication via consumption, one highly endowed
with meaning.
The compulsion to consume is not reducible to the power of manipulation,
or emulation, or conspicuous display. Consumption is not just desire-
purchase-disappointrnent-rekindled desire. When consumption leads to
the generation of meaning, as it almost always does, it is an active and
creative imaginative endeavor. (Twitchell 45)
What is important, then, is to examine the concept of consumption not through the optic
of oppression, as it cripples a reading of unbound individual subjectivity. Rather this
investigation explores the role of consumption — an aspect. central to everyday life -
through the lens of its active dynamic construction of meaning and emancipatory
potential, as consumers form a community (composed of various collectivities that
subscribe to distinct cultures of consumption) that continually negotiates meaning,
forming and transmitting messages by way of their consurnption practices. Concurrently,
this activity extends into their interpretation of signiﬁcations projected from the mass.
“Consumers are just another interpretative community. They are readers” (47). This is
of fundamental signiﬁcance to consumption; through the navigation of codes, the subject
confects selfhood, and subsequently transmits the code via the bodily text made legible to
the masses. The fact that the individual continuously negotiates meaning via
consumption practices evidences that the subject is active — not a passive victim.
Fundamental to consumption practices is the adoption, re-appropriation, and
subsequent transmission of the image. The symbols one elects and how they are exacted

determines what is desired and how it is used. Gottdiener remarks that this social use

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“lay in the symbolic meanings that could be invested in the. . .commodities, its ability to
signify the status, interests, afﬁnities” (203). According to the French philosopher Jean
Baudrillard, “In the postmodern world of culture, the image becomes central”(Simulacra
and Simulation 18). Baudrillard asserts that image dominates as the fundamental vehicle
of communication in present society. This philosopher critiqued the ideas of Marx
concerning the system of production and consumption in capitalist society, as he
maintained that Marx’s perspective did not give sufﬁcient importance to the aspect of
consumption, focusing overwhelmingly on the elements of production and labor and their
effects on subjectivity. Consequently, he tinkered with Marx’s discourse positing
consumption as the primordial focus in the capitalist structure while maintaining the link
between production and consumption that lies at the nucleus in the investigation of
capitalism. Unlike Marx, who deﬁned the stages of society according to their modes of
production, Baudrillard envisions societal transformations according to the dominant
modes of representation in society. He afﬁrms:
The passage from the form-commodity to the form-sign, from the
abstraction of the exchange of material products under the law of general
equivalence to the operationalization of all exchanges under the law of the
code [i.e., the semiological structure that governs all meaning, reducing
value to merely utilitarian form]. With this passage to the political
economy of the Sign, it is not a matter of simple “commercial prostitution”
of all values [as Marx says]. . .It is a matter of the passage of all values to
exchange-sign value, under the hegemony of the code. That is, of a

structure of control and of power much more subtle and more totalitarian

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than that of exploitation. For the sign is much more than a connotation of

the commodity, than a semiological supplement to exchange value (The

Mirror of Production 121-122)
According to Baudrillard, the referential realm of the commodity, and what that entails —
needs, use value, and labor- has been displaced in postmodernity by the triumph,
proliferation, and all-encompassing grip of the sign. Power ceases to be centered in the
commodity itself, but rather is an abstraction dependent upon “autonomous development
of the sign” (Best and Kellner 100). He differentiates himself from Marx in numerous
ways; Marx argued that the “mass” was dominated by artiﬁcial and false ideologies,
while Baudrillard, on the other hand, articulates that the “mass” already recognizes that
the prevailing ideologies are false, and rather is dominated and controlled by the
spectacle: “the spectacle is the afﬁrmation of appearance and the afﬁrmation of all
human, i.e. social, life as mere appearance” (The Mirror of Production 10). This theorist
does not focus his attention so much on the political economy and its relationship to
consumption, rather he places emphasis on what he calls ‘sign value’. He afﬁrms that the
reality that we consume is composed of signs or images. Going beyond Marx, who
stridently ﬁnds fault with the system of capitalism based upon the terms of production,
Baudrillard afﬁrms that it is impossible to critique the capitalist system without seriously
considering the value of the spectacle or ‘sign value’, profoundly irnbricated in society,
which plays out in the commodiﬁcation of culture. In his opinion, reality as spectacle
creates an epoch of:

[. . .] radical alienation. The logic of the market has become generalized,

governing today not only the processes of work and material products, but

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our entire culture, sexuality, human relations, including even our fantasies
and individual impulses. Everything is covered by this logic, not only in
the sense that all functions, all needs are objectiﬁed and manipulated in
terms of proﬁt, but in the deeper sense that everything becomes spectacle
[tout est spectacularisé], that is to say is evoked, provoked, orchestrated in
images, in signs, in consumable models. (The Consumer Society 309)
While both theorists formulate conclusions that relegate the subject as isolated victim,
Baudrillard's theory has a twist. He asserts that the market has the power to instill values
and needs — in the name of proﬁt - which extend past material goods, but rather shape
our social dynamics. As Baudrillard contends, everything is spectacle and reality is being
purely represented via the image due to its own commodiﬁcation. Baudrillard’s ideas
mean that everyday life has become “aestheticized” (F eatherstone 270). As Featherstone
remarks about this theorist:
For Baudrillard art ceases to be a separate enclaved reality; it enters into
production and reproduction so that everything ‘even if it be the everyday
and banal reality, falls by this token under the sign of art, and become
aesthetic’. . .And so art is everywhere, since artiﬁce is at the very heart of
reality. (F eatherstone 271)
Evidenced in the citation, as life is art, and art is life, our existence is contrived as we our
mere tokens of the market system. Baudrillard argues that the Sign, while clearly and
powerfully communicative, saturates our everyday existence to the point that the
individual can only lead a passive existence, incapable of creative involvement within the

sign system. He attributes this to the fact that the spectacle has provoked an inward

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collapse of reality. Consequently reality ceases to be and converts to irreality.
Furthermore, Baudrillard asserts that the utter saturation of the spectacle in society will
ultimately lead to the demise of Western culture due to its implosion”. He asserts:
[. . .] the masses scandalously resist this imperative of rational
communication. They are given meaning: they want spectacle. No effort
has been able to convert them to the seriousness of the content, nor even to
the seriousness of the code. Messages are given to them, they only want
some sign, they idolize the play of signs and stereotypes, they idolize any
content so long as it resolves itself into a spectacular sequence. (In the
Shadow of the Silent Majorities 13)
His critical reproach of the ability of the masses to rationalize suggests a partial
approximation negating the autonomy and creativity of the consumer, the very aspect of
production involved in the process of consumption. At the same time, his theory posits
that the consumer’s desire is to emulate high society, which is not always the case as
evidenced by the blossoming of subcultures throughout the globe (and will be elaborated
upon later). F urthermore, his theory fails to consider how sexual difference and gender
operate within the system of signs, as well as the resulting embodiment of the subject,
opting instead to relegate all consumers as passive receptors in a world bombarded by the
spectacle. It is undeniable that not all consumers attain liberatory potential via
consumption practices; nevertheless, subjects, as consumers, are actively selecting, re-
appropriating, and encoding their bodies and lives vis-a-vis what they consume and the

manner in which it is embodied and transmitted.

 

’9 The concept of implosion was ﬁrst articulated and discussed in the modern era by Nietzche; however, it
was presented as ‘nihilism’.

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Although the image is of fundamental importance to the study of consumption,
this dissertation seriously examines consumption as an aspect central to the life of both
the individual and society. From this platform, the inquiry considers the type of
relationships created via one’s autonomous interaction with consumables (material or
abstract). This leads to an exploration of the manner in which the subject negotiates
meaning by way of her appropriation of the object and resulting embodiment.
Concurrently, it examines the liberatory potential for subjectivity stemming from
autonomous self-creation vis-a-vis consumption practices, while acknowledging the
unhealthy subjectivities produced as well. As Twitchell contends, “The process of
consumption, therefore, is creative and even emancipating. In an open market we
consume the real and the imaginary meanings, fusing objects, symbols, and images
together. . .the object of self-realization via consumption is no longer preordained by class
but results from a never-ending shifting of individual choice” (47). As Twitchell
elaborates, through consumption practices the subject, according to desire, may confect
identity that is not in accord with class, rather stems from dynamic individual decisions.
His argument arrives at this conclusion through the following assertions: “Humans are
consumers by nature. We are tool users because we like to use what tool using can
produce. In other words, tools are not the ends but the means. . .Consumers are
rational. . .They are often ﬁrlly aware that they are more interested in consuming aura than
objects...” (22). As such, the subject does not consume simply for the act of consuming.
Rather, it is an intricate process whereby consumable are tools; they are signs that speak
to the self and the mass, result in selfhood, and the formation of groups that share like

afﬁnities. These concepts lead him to probe the dynamics of the role of the consumer

85

within commodity culture; he interrogates and debunks the notion of consumer as
passive, while (drawing attention to and) reconsidering the connection that exists among
consumption and production, “for they are more alike than separate, and occur not at
different times and places but simultaneously” (22-23).

Today’s society is one in which both production and consumption are important
in the dynamics of culture of consumption. While consumption is a global phenomenon,
it appears that the dominant culture of consumption roots itself in goods exported from
the United States“). Nevertheless, there exist many sub-cultures of consumption that
differentiate the globalized population“. Postmodern consumption involves consumers
who are producers in constructing selves, self-images, and meaningful experiences;
Adela Cortina argues, “En la sociedad a la que se ha dado en llarnar <<posmoderna>>, a
falta de nombre mas creativo, se diﬁuninan las identidades ﬁjas, establecidas por el
nacimiento, la clase, la etrria 0 e1 sexo, y una de las formas de crearse la propia identidad
es el lugar en el que se compra” (92). Cortina argues that in postmodernity, the identity
of the subject is freed from diverse constraints that existed in the past such as social class,
ethnicity, and birth. Due to the shifts in cultural systems, identities de-stabilized and
constructed via the outlet of consumption. This act, then, can be an exercise of individual
liberty; by consuming, we construct and reconstruct, according to our pleasures,
subjectivity. In our postmodern world of consumption, undeniably image is at the

forefront. In this line, goods and services that lie at the heart of the material realm cease

 

’0 There does exist a plethora of cultures of consumption. However, we my condsider the US. consumer
culture as a dominant force behind the globalization of cultures of consumption. In large part, these
cultures of consumption stem from lifestyle orientations.

" By this I mean there exists a plethora of cultures of consumption. However, we may consider the US.
consumer culture as a dominant force behind the globalization of cultures of consumption. In large part,
these cultures of consumption stem from lifestyle orientations.

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to be directly linked to use-vale, but rather these obj ects-in-use convert to symbols or
signs. People respond to these goods not purely based on their use-value, but rather their
symbolic possibilities. “Beyond social positions, the consumption of goods as images
constitutes a process of representational positioning” (Gottdiener 19). Gottdiener
succinctly asserts that consumption practices yield representation or identity construction.
We may signify ourselves through how we appear to be, who we emulate from mass
culture (Ewen 1988), and culture itself is now about image (Kellner 1995). But not just
image in and of itself; we meaningfully consume and produce our selves through our
appropriation of goods.

Fuat Firat, in Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theaters of
Consumption asserts: “Consumption is not an end but just another moment in the
continuous cycle of (re)production” (100). As mentioned previously, subjects utilize
goods and are in a constant state of negotiation and transmission of code. The process,
indeed, is not the terminus. Similarly Gottdiener professes, “Consumption practices have
increasingly become the domain within which people explore and deﬁne their own
identities...” (22). Spaces with which one associates become potential contingencies for
the fabrication of selfhood. Moreover, he asserts that spaces of consumption are
articulation points of individual psychology, social pressures, the media, fashion, and the
realization of belonging. Hence the pursuit of distinctive lifestyles through consumption
may represent a means of developing a sense of self and of actualizing identity politics. I
view this as consistent with Rosi Braidotti’s desire to create positive categories. Through
autonomous self-creation and pursuit of distinct lifestyles, one could also seek a more

positive, multi-faceted identity.

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While these theories are building blocks for a solid foundation on consumption,
they neglect to consider the affectual bodily text. In other words, while goods possess a
sign value (Baudrillard), the consumption of these objects can be a mode of self-
expression embodied on the textual subject that is contingent upon the nomadic
becoming-woman. As mentioned previously, the act of consumption must not simply be
understood as “devouring” or “metabolizing”. Rather, I suggest a shift in the
understanding of consumption that entails a re-examination of the active female role
within the realm of consumption. I explore consumption within the contemporary
Spanish context, examining the myriad of goods — fashion, sex, drugs, memories, space,
technology, and music - that are consumed. In this study, I demonstrate how the
feminine subject is an agent who can enact change and evolution. We must look at the
shifts as experiences that go beyond symbols or mere images of pleasure. Additionally,
as Rachel Bowlby argues, with globalization of cultures, mass media, advances in
technology, and access to consumption: “Consumption. . .has offered women new areas
of authority and expertise, new sources of income, a new sense of consumer right; and
one of the consequences of these developments has been a heightened awareness of
entitlement outside the sphere of consurnption”(16). From this point of view, Bowlby
understands the realm of consumption in two dimensions: as a space in which to
negotiate and resist the passive absent feminine identity, as assigned through sex roles,
and furthermore as the ongoing process of the creation of identity that embodies the
nomadic subject. With respect to cultures of consumption, these aforementioned

analyses provide a basis for becoming-woman or the feminist subject as these cultures

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afford women a libidinal return on their investment that is often experienced as liberating,
and one which, I argue, can be seen as positive in feminist terms.

The study of consumption contextualized with feminism is of particular
signiﬁcance in contemporary Spanish society, as not even three decades have eclipsed
since the fall of Francisco Franco’s regime and the subsequent installation of democracy.
During the dictatorship, there were varying degrees of control over all aspects of life that
immobilized free expression of self. The last ﬁfteen years of the regime, 1960-1975,
stand in stark contrast to the previous twenty; in a decade and a half the country of Spain
massively transformed from a predominantly agricultural economy to one that could be
considered developed and capitalist. Borja de Riquer i Perrnanyer argues, “Spain went
ﬁom being a backward agrarian country on the periphery of international capitalism, to
one which could be considered fully industrialized, with a strong service sector, ﬁrlly
integrated into the global economic system” (259). Within a short expanse, the economic
and political dynamics of this country radically transformed. These adaptations, not
always necessarily rooted in Franco’s policies, emerged as a result of internal and
external tensions. Internationally, the economy of the Western world was experiencing
unparalleled growth while within the country, this only added to the growing tensions
which stemmed from the collective desire to emerge from the autarkic isolation. Hence,
as a result of the Plan de Estabilizacién of 1959, Spain saw the introduction of a market
economy.

Backed by the World Bank, the OECD, and the IMF, foreign and domestic
trading was liberalized, a policy aimed at attracting foreign investment

was implemented, and a more orthodox ﬁnancial policy adopted —

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entailing a 50 percent devaluation of the peseta - along with a programme

for the development of public services. (Riquer i Permanyer 259)
Due to alterations in Spanish foreign trade policy, new products, ideas, and people
entered the country, which inevitably had an impact. The Spanish economy experienced
tremendous success along with capitalist growth. After decades of isolation Spain
imported “machinery, technology, raw materials, and energy resources on a massive
scale” (260). If this were not already astonishing, the country was also able to fund their
foreign interests through currency obtained from tourism.

The result of these economic transformations is signiﬁcant. Household income
increased signiﬁcantly as did production. Borja de Riquer i Permanyer illustrates the
noteworthy alterations through four compelling statistics.

Between 1960 and 1974 the average income per capita tripled, rising from
$400 to $1,350 per annum. The GDP grew during the 19603 at an average
of 7.5 per cent per annum, a rate surpassed only by Japan. Growth in
industrial output in 1960-7 was the fastest in the world at 10.5 per cent per
annum. And real industrial wages increased by 40 per cent in this period.
(262)
Another dimension of the overwhelming economic success manifest in the redistribution
of the working population within Spain. As the country shifted gears from a primarily
agrarian economy to industry, the number of people working on land dropped drastically.
This resulted from the displacement of approximately 1,500,000 jobs. As this sector
experienced irreconcilable loss, other sectors catapulted: “the industrial sector took on

300,000 more workers, while the tertiary (service) sector provided 1,500,000 new jobs in

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services, and 500,000 in the building trade” (262). Along with this shift, Spain saw
parallel deviations in the population centers. From 1955 to 1975, more than twenty
percent of the Spanish population — six million people - changed provinces; furthermore
2 million migrated to Madrid and 1,800,000 to Barcelona (Riquer i Permanyer 263). This
transfer in physical position from the external, rural zones to urban locales is signiﬁcant
as it portended a new social reality. As a result of these transformations, metropolitan
centers such as Madrid and Barcelona experienced rapid growth and expansion”.
The transformations experienced in Spain from 1960-1975 were of signiﬁcance in
terms of number and quality. As stated previously, within this decade and a half in
Spain, the country experienced drastic economic changes that reverberated throughout
other spheres of daily living. As employment in the agrarian sector dwindled and
opportunities soared in the industrial sector, a new urban accommodated class emerged.
The rise of this privileged class was intimately connected to the newly established
interests in banking, tourism, construction, and foreign capital. “The greatest fortunes
made in these years were amassed by ﬁgures such as Areces, with El Corte Inglés;
Koplowitz, with Construcciones y Contratas; Banr'rs, with Puerto Banr'rs on the Costa del
Sol; Barrie de la Maza, with Fenosa; Melia, with hotels; Barreiros, with road haulage; or
Ruiz Mateos, with banking and wine” (Riquer i Permanyer 264). With the development
of the industrial sector, job opportunities arose across the board, ranging from those
requiring a university degree, such as managers or administrators, to those requiring few
professional qualiﬁcations. It is at this level we note the emergence of a new working

class composed of young people of rural origin, who just a few years earlier would have

 

’2 From 1960 to 1975 the number of urban centers with populations over 100,000 doubled from twenty in
1960 to over forty in 1975.

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been relegated to the impoverished conditions of agricultural life, but were now
contenders in the ﬁnancial sector.

These transformations occurring throughout Spain in the 1960s led to its
introduction into a full-blown consumer society. As money ﬂowed into the country from
foreign investments, tourism, and the creation of a new economy, citizens also became
consumers. Borja de Riquer i Permanyer elaborates:

This speed of this process (consumer society) is exempliﬁed by the impact
of television. Spanish Television did not begin broadcasting regularly
until 1959, but by 1974 70 per cent of homes had a TV. The same year
saw 85 per cent of household in possession of a washing machine and a
ﬁidge. Car ownership rose even more rapidly. The SEAT factory in
Barcelona, which turned out 30,000 saloon cars in 1960, produced over
360,000 by 1972. Spanish levels of car ownership rose from 500,000 (one
car for every ﬁfty-ﬁve inhabitants) in 1960, to over 3,300,000 (one for
every nine) in 1974. (265)
Spain witnessed a new social reality with the introduction of mass consumerism. Not
only did technology aid in the completion of mundane chores, but also the arrival of the
television bears particular importance. It served as an asset that was an aperture to
popular knowledge about the world and increased visibility of other socially lived
realities. Further evidence of the inauguration of consumer society in 1960, made patent
in the Real Academia de la Lengua, was the incorporation of new words in the dictionary
such as televisor, lavadora, ﬁnanciacidn, and aparcarniento. While other European

countries were absorbing into consumer society alongside Spain, the emergence of this

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culture was experienced in a distinct manner for the Spanish. To begin with, it occurred
at a very accelerated pace, due largely to the television which provided instantaneous
access to other cultures. “Spain passed rapidly from high levels of functional illiteracy to
TV saturation without passing through intermediate stages of cultural development”
(Riquer i Permanyer 265). The velocity of this process did not permit the Spaniards to
pass through an intermediate stage, rather the society transformed from one extreme to
another. As mentioned previously, the economic landscape of Spain changed drastically
from predominantly agriculture to being dominated by industry — foreign and domestic-
within ﬁfteen years. To an extent, consumerism and the dictatorship were becoming
compatible in the formerly autarkic country that just recently opened its doors to trade,
yet the dictatorship still retained power. While Franco and the regime purported the
country was in a period of aperturismo or liberalization, this was nothing more than a
mask”. The “freedoms” (there was little freedom of speech and thought in the Spanish
mass media) associated with consumer society, in particular the television, were greeted
with timber acts of repression manifesting through censorship, prosecutions, and
propaganda, nevertheless, this mass culture had the ability to alter signiﬁcantly the
Spaniard’s perception of daily social, economic, and political life. Through the
television, citizens were bombarded with images of new products and status symbols of
the western world. This projection of worldwide images permitted them if not the

“freedom to purchase”, the freedom to consume and fantasize. It created an educational

 

’3 An example of this is the acceptance of Buﬂuel’s movie, Viridiana, to the Cannes Film Festival, in which
it won an esteemed international award but was subsequently banned in Spain due to its controversial
content.

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space — previously inexistent in the regime - that opened up the dictatorship for critique,
as the worlds and images they witnessed were not in accord with their social reality“.
Television, despite the rigid political control to which it was subjected,
turned itself into a genuine window onto the world, indirectly helping to
break the stranglehold of the cultural and informational ‘autarky’ enforced
by the regime. Similarly, the youth culture of the 1960s had a startling
impact on the rigid social world of Franco’s Spain, where enthusiasm for
the Beatles or Bob Dylan, or emerging Spanish protest singers,
represented a more overt political statement than in democratic societies.
(Riquer I Permanyer 265)
Indeed the introduction of the television into Spain produced drastic transformations in
the society concurrently with the boom in the economy. The existence of the modem
television within households gave way to globalizing inﬂuences and postmodern cultural
fragrnentations. The arrival of mass culture, as experienced through the television
(although heavily censored), converted the citizens into consumers of images, while the
soar in the economy allowed them to exercise their liberty and own one these images. In
his survey undertaken in 1960, Amando de Miguel interviewed his participants about the
goods they consume. His results reﬂect their attitudes and desire to appropriate goods for
their own comfort and pleasure. Certain objects saturated Spanish households; eight out
of every ten owned a radio and disposed of running water. Nevertheless, the objects of
consumption represented the existent socio-economic inequalities persistent among the

population. While certain commodities were proliﬁc: “hay otros que no llegan a1 10%

 

4’ In large part these reactions and movements were protagonized by the youths of this period. What
perhaps began as a rebellion against the parental authority converted into revolution against all ﬁgures of
authority, as witnessed through the slogan of the student movement of 1968, “haz el amor y no la guerra>>.

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de los hogares de varones: frigoriﬁco eléctrico, coche o televisor. El consumo reahnente
masivo de esos tres articulos iba a ser e1 <<sueiio>> de la década de los aﬁos sesenta”
(3 5). These luxury items, a television, refrigerator, and car, echoed the American dream
as seen through North American movies, and remained symbols for the Spaniard. We
only need to remember the brilliant movie made by Luis G. Berlanga [Bienvenida Mister
Marshall! (1952): a ﬁlm that portrayed the American dream and ﬁlled the heads of
Spaniards with the promise of future economic prosperity and consequent autonomy.
Adela Cortina implies that the act of consumption may serve liberatory roles. She states,
“Y si el acto mismo de consumo pertenece a1 reino de la libertad, tanto mas seran
miembros de ese reino las formas de consumo, y entre ellas, las formas de consumir
productos del mercado” (29). Overall, the introduction of mass culture into Spain had
profound effects on experienced social reality that translated into the questioning of self-
identity. In his article Borj a de Riquer i Permanyer describes the ambience of this period
as one of growing skepticism especially among the “younger generation that had not
lived through the civil war. This increasingly critical attitude was based on two
fundamental principles: better information about world affairs and the decline of
traditional religious values” (266). The television exposed the culture, especially the
youths, to exhilarating experimentation, from the frenetic rock and roll of the Beatles to
the emergence of the pop style. This window revealing aspects across the globe is a form
of technology that permitted the spectator to travel and experience cultural identities and
different worlds without leaving the conﬁnes of the home.

The gradual erosion of the inﬂuence of the Catholic Church and the politics of

Franco combined with new economic opportunities created a space for the contemplation

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and critique of the traditional power structure. The death of Franco in 1975 and the
subsequent inauguration of the new Constitution in 1978 resulted in spectacular grth in
areas ranging from mass culture to individual autonomy. A natural result of the political
developments within Spain was greater freedom, as they were now citizens of
democracy, but concurrently Spaniards, in particular the youth generation, were able to
exercise further liberty in the realm of consumerism“. Navarro claims: “El consumo se
ha convertido asi en uno de los primeros comportarrrientos auténomos que comienzan a
ejercerse desde la infancia, y para muchos casi la r’mica conexién con el mundo de los
adultos, fuera del sistema escolar y la familia” (qtd. in Amando de Miguel 168). While
Navarro’s argument underlines the totality and centrality of consumption in and
individual’s life, his argument may also imply that consumption is and inherent human
activity.

Much like the television, magazines became another venue by which one,
particularly women, could absorb into mass culture. In particular, fashion magazines
such as Ama, Telva, and ,‘Hola! converted their predominantly female readership into
consumers of images, products, and new ways of life. The introduction of these
magazines into society in the 19608 offered a new ideal for women, one in which she is
represented as autonomous. Nonetheless, from their inception into Spanish culture until
the year 1976, these women’s magazines followed the dictates of Franco ﬁrst and their

commercial agenda next. For instance, the magazine Ama, which had a diffusion of

180,000 in 1970 was linked to the Opus Dei, the ultra conservative technocratic body

 

’5 According to Amando de Miguel, the youth generation of the 1950s had little if any access to money due
to the severe economic hardships experienced throughout the country. The decade of the 40s was denoted
‘década de hambre’ by the Spanish because of the tremendous poverty. However, this sociologist found
that youth generations following 1960 had some pocket change that allowed them to experience autonomy
as consumers.

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governing with Franco. As a result the principal themes treated were “niftos, pedagogia,
reportaj es, actualidad, articulos, decoracién, trabajos manuales, modas, hogar, belleza,
libros, discos, cocina, consultorio sentimental, de belleza y religioso” (Riviere 140).

T elva, founded in 1963 and also linked to Opus Dei, intended to import external elements
and adapt them to the Spanish society. In its presentation, it appeared much like the
French magazines Elle and Marie Claire. Similar to Ama, T elva focused on fashion,
interior design, gastronomy, and social concerns. These magazines, while they did
promote gender differences, also were a medium to present images of women for the
consumption of women, rather than men. This arena, akin to the television, provided a
space for consumer empowerment as the magazines, through their articles and
advertisements, extended an invitation to its readership to own the feminine body as
one’s self.

In consideration of the relation among consumption and the female subject,
scholars such Angela McRobbie rethink the role of the concept Woman. She postulates
that consumer culture, in general, and fashion in particular, offer women the means of
satisfying desires and pursuing pleasure. Her theory, however, does not focus merely on
bourgeois status, but rather on youth subcultures that exist, stemming from the pursuit of
various cultures of consumption. McRobbie additionally researches the role of female
magazines - targeted primarily at youth culture- and their active interplay in the
stimulation of the female imagination. Likewise, their consumption in this realm may be
considered an exercise in and afﬁrmation of autonomy. She agrees that the female youth

culture:

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...do not want to be represented in a humiliating way. They are not
dependent on boys for their own sense of identity and well being.
Magazines (like Jackie) which continue to offer this passive stereotype of
femininity will simply lose their readers. As young consumers girls are
therefore able to exert some power in the marketplace. They will buy a
magazine as long as it presents an image of themselves which is
compatible with those selves that exist outside the text...There is also a re-
deﬁnition of the feminine self. It can be endlessly constructed,
reconstructed and customized. (Shut up and Dance: Changing Modes of
Youth F emininity 8)
McRobbie recognizes the capacity and desire on the part of young women to be portrayed
as active agents that participate in identity formation through the adoption of codes that
are compatible with their ideologies and afﬁnities. As McRobbie argues, the process of
purchasing and marketing commodities does not transpire in a void; rather the process
entails the formation of a connection of “much longer chains of meaning and value
systems” (14). Through an exploration of these afﬁliations, one can garner an
understanding of the intricate and sophisticated pleasures associated with consumption
practices. Not only does this investigation yield important awareness of the creative
operations that it entails, but also unveils the rich multiplicity of subjectivities at play,
each texturized by the autonomous elections of the consumer.
It must be noted that other scholars, such as Susan Bordo, maintain that consumer
culture oppresses women, while masking as a discourse that animates subjects to

“imagine the possibilities’ and close our eyes to limits and consequences” (39). Bordo’s

98

line of argument addresses political, social, economic, and ideological situations that
demean, oppress, and limit the value of woman. Likewise, she focuses on the
homogenization and consequential normalization of images and signs disseminated in
mass cultural representations. Bordo afﬁrms:
First, the representations homogenize. In our culture, this means that they
will smooth out all racial, ethnic, and sexual “differences” that disturb
Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual expectations and identiﬁcations. . .Consumer
capitalism depends on the continual production of novelty, of fresh images
to stimulate desire. . .Second, these homogenized images normalize - that
is, they ﬁmction as models against which the self continually measures,
judges, “disciplines,” and “corrects” itself. (24-25)
Bordo calls for a change in focus away from the body as a semiotic signiﬁer;
nevertheless, this fails to acknowledge the complex dialectic occurring between the
subject and object. As a result, her theories do not consider the manner in which women
appropriate and own these images. Bordo centers on the institutional context of
consumption and their participation in the creation of the illusion of power, while never
endowing the subject with agency. She argues against the liberating role of consumption
stating: “The fact is we are not empowered in this way by our culture; indeed, we are
continually being taught to see the body that reﬂects back to us in exactly the opposite
way — as wrong, defective, ‘a caricature, a swollen shadow, a stupid clown’” (299-300).
In placing the focus on the institutional, the focus on the individual is smoothed over, and

consequently, functions as little more than a token, made to desire, aspire to, and

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consume the whims of higher authority reﬂected in the institutional practices of
commercial culture.

The aforementioned feminists illustrate two poles, a radical optimism versus a
totalizing critique; nevertheless, the truth remains in the gray expanse between the
opposed essentialisms. In consideration of the potential agency endowed to the female
subject by way of her participation in cultures of consumption, particular ambiguities
must be signaled. To begin with, the patriarchy has constructed the female subject as a
sex object with a speciﬁc use-value; she is other (Bordo). Some feminists believe that
woman is unable to escape the binary opposition of mother/prostitute, and therefore the
re-production of this representation (woman as commodity) cannot support the feminist
aim of emancipation. Nevertheless, upon exploration of the manner in which the subjects
experience their female sexuality or their subject as a commodity, the totalizing critique
becomes clouded. Furthermore, it begs for further examination of the reahn of
consumption and re-appropriation of these goods. In so doing, this may open the
possibility for the female subject to draw attention to the identity she articulates. Power
can be derived from her ability to manipulate images and confuse gender/moral codes.
Although her desired representation may be perceived as seductive or insubordinate to
hegemonic norms, one must also consider the power and pleasure she gleans from her
sexuality, which disrupts essentialist explanations. Consumer culture may afford women
distinct opportunities for the approximation of self-creation. Vis-a-vis her knowledge of
and interaction with the material reahn, each woman as nomad, makes meaningful

negotiations, communicating to the self and the collectivity. This dynamic interaction is

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also ongoing; the female subject traverses territory, negotiates meaning, and assembles

and re-assembles identity.

Cultures of Consumption: Imagined Communities and Nee-tribes

In the epoch of postmodernity, an era infused with globalization of cultures and
homogenization of customs, identity ceases to be deﬁned according to traditional
categories. Rather, there is a growing emphasis in society on lifestyles and individual
interests as a designation of who one is and as a manner to connect and unite with others.
Gottdiener argues, “Now people increasing relate to each other through commonly held
consumption practices such as their preferences in sports, vacations, music, ﬁlms,
restaurants, and not the least, modes of shopping itself” (21). These activities and
exercises do not merely represent marginal elements of consumer culture, but actually, in
their aggregate, they eclipse other aspects of society. A vested interest in particular
lifestyles divides society into agglomerate groups, these groupings expressing a desire for
the consumption of a like good. In considering the emergence of this conglomeration of
assemblages, which I argue can be viewed as what Benedict Anderson denominates
“imagined communities”, it is fundamental to outline his theory to be followed by an
explication of its synthesis to the present investigation.

In his investigation of the concept nation and nationalism, Anderson utilizes the term
‘imagined communities’ to signify “. . .the nation: it is an imagined political community
— and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). As evidenced through his
deﬁnition, his notion of nation departs from the mere geographical, political, and

economic dynamics traditionally conceived of alongside this term. His study begins with

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a deﬁnition of key terms for the comprehension of what constitutes ‘imagined’
community; these terms include: imagined, limited, sovereign, and community.
Anderson postulates that a community is imagined because one is incapable of knowing
all of the people that are members; nevertheless they joined as “in the minds of each lives
the image of their communion” (6). As such, a nation is not deﬁned simply as political
entity, but developed and molded by culture. Communities are also limited; this is
attributed the fact that there are diverse interests and pursuits among the various global
populations. A feature of these communities is that they are sovereign, a notion that
arose with the Enlightenment, an era that challenged the validity of the ancient regime of
deiﬁc authority; consequentially this clash led to the debilitation of “the divinely-
ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm” (7), as well as the aperture for the possibility of
freedom. The last term fundamental to Anderson’s concept is community. Anderson
asserts that the community is composed of a nation “conceived as a deep, horizontal
comradeship” (7). He, furthermore, justiﬁes this notion, regardless of the disparity that
may exist among the members offering as example people prepared to give their lives for
their vision.

To comprehend how the dynamics of Anderson’s theory of ‘imagined
communities’ ﬁts with the concept of cultures of consumption, it is necessary to explain
the origin and roots of Anderson’s proposal. His concept of ‘imagined communities’
does not stem from political alliances or diplomatic assrunptions; rather he asserts that at
the heart of the community exists interplay between cultural dynamics that presuppose
political structures. He proposes that: “nationalism has to be understood by aligning it,

not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that

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preceded it, out of which- as well as against which — it came into being” (12). To
comprehend the concept of nationalism, one must begin the exploration with the
examination of cultural evolutions that have shaped and informed it. He analyzes the two
aggregates integral to the cultural realm until the epoch of the Enlightenment — the
religious community and the dynastic realm. In his discussion, he highlights the strengths
of these two systems and commented on their instabilities that ultimately led to their
downfall. To begin with, the religious community- while composed of many different
tenitories and an array of religions- were able to assemble as an imagined group and
interact within their comrades via their reciprocal ability to comprehend the sign.
Anderson afﬁrms:
...Christendom, the Islamic Ummah, and even the Middle Kingdom —
which, though we think of it today as Chinese, imagined itself not as
Chinese, but as central — were imaginable largely through the medium of a
sacred language and written script. Take only the example of Islam: if
Maguindanao met Berbers in Mecca, knowing nothing of each other’s
languages, incapable of communicating orally, they nonetheless
understood each other’s ideographs, because the sacred texts they shared
existed only in classical Arabic. In this sense, written Arabic functioned
like Chinese characters to create a community out of signs, not sounds.
(13)
Interestingly, religious communities unable to transmit messages verbally, communicated
through the word, the sign. It was the sign that united groups across the expanses and

their ability to read and identify with that sign rendered them part of the same

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community. This, which I will expand upon later, can be seamed with cultures of
consumption; through consumption, we produce and transmit meaning via the sign,
legible to those who partake in the same communion of goods.

Nations guided purely by principles of the sacred have nevertheless disintegrated
as their legitimacy has waned. Anderson attributes this to the embarkrnent of global
expeditions, the consequences of which magniﬁed cultural knowledge, augmented
curiosity of the non-European world, and offered the awareness of other modes of life
(Anderson). Another factor in the debilitation of this sector is the fragmentation of the
Latin, the sacred language. As the use of vernacular and other languages rose, “...Latin
ceased to be the language of a pan-European high intelligentsia” (l 8). With the
fractionalization of Latin, the realm of the sacred lost its privilege as a fundamental
conductor of culture, and subsequently, nation.

Anderson’s modern day notion of ‘imagined communities’ also stems from an
investigation of the dynamics of the dynastic realm, focusing particularly on the model of
society in which, at the center, lies monarchy. He comments: “Kingship organizes
everything around a high center. Its legitimacy derives from divinity, not from
populations, who after all, are subjects, not citizens” (19). In a system ruled by a
hereditary sovereign with more or less unlimited powers, a monarch maintains a
dominant position indoctrinated with supreme power and sovereignty. This model of
cultural system functioned for centuries, increasing their territory and power through
rivalries and marriages among kingdoms. Nevertheless, while distinct from the religious

cultural system and its relationship to nation, leadership stemming from divine right was

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challenged during the Enlightenment, yet continues to exist in various countries to this
day.

The conception of modern ‘imagined communities’ is due to a series of factors
and did not come about as a substitute for the two aforementioned cultural systems.
Rather there were widespread changes occurring in the eighteenth century that effected
the framework of the conception of community and nation: “Beneath the decline of
sacred communities, languages and lineages, a fundamental change was taking place in
modes of apprehending the world, which more than anything else, made it possible to
‘think’ the nation” (22). This transformation was occurring by way of the emergence of
print media: “the novel and the newspaper. For these forms provided the technical
means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation” (25).
Through these two media, one could participate in the community through experience
acquired by reading. That is, while the member may not have previous awareness of
what is being described in the newspaper or personal knowledge of the theme elaborated
upon in the novel, she could imagine and create and share in the experience, as well as
connect, via the word.

Of course, the process of the formation of modern ‘imagined communities’
intensiﬁed with the appearance of print capitalism as well as transformations in
technology. As a result of these developments, the possibility for the new creation of
communities is endless, especially taking into consideration the globalization of cultures.
“What, in a positive sense, made the new communities imaginable was a half-fortuitous,
but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations

(capitalism), and a technology of communications (print)” (Anderson 42-43). The

105

conﬂuence of capitalism and print technology facilitated communication between the
masses, which concurrently promotes an exchange of ideas and also a sense of individual
and collective identity. As Anderson contends, “These fellow-readers, to whom they
were connected through print, formed, in their secular, particular, visible invisibility, the
embryo of the nationally imagined community”(44). By way of the ability to have access
and read print media, one could form a kinship with another, without respect of race, age,
or profession. Rather, the word bridged a connection among diverse groups of people
and the result is the manifestation of the budding of communities whose commonality
was the printed word. Accessibility to information has become widespread and the
possibility to connect globally and form a horizontal kinship with another has been made
possible by these technologies; a series of advances that have exploded the possibilities
for “a new form of imagined community” (46) fashioned by contingencies unique to each
group.

The theory of Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ intimately correlates with cultures
of consumption. The diverse social groups that encompass the globe, regardless of their
locality, ethnicity, or historical heritage, unite by way of common interests (facilitated by
advanced technologies). At the core of the bond is the consumption of an object that
converts to sign and not only is made legible but also communicates to the masses.
Cultures of consumption become articulation points of identity, and these various cultures
manifest in diverse ‘imagined commrmities’ increasing the possibility for the creation of
autonomous self-construction.

Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’ can be patch worked with the notion

of neo-tribes posited by Maffesoli. The conjoining of these theories provides a deeper

106

understanding of the manifestation ‘imagined communities’ of cultures of consumption
and also lends ﬁrrther support to the argument that via consumption practices, one has the
potential to shape subjectivity and identify with a global community. While the two
theorists employ distinct terminology and have different approaches, they both
investigate contemporary identity - utilizing historical antecedents — and its relationship
to the cultural and social reahn. While Anderson explores the creation of ‘imagined
communities’ through the global spread of print capitalism, Maffesoli investigates the
existence of contemporary cultural communities that he denominates neo-tribes. He
applies this term to categorize groups that reﬂect various cultures of consumption such as
sports, hobbies, and fashion, to name a few. These masses or tribes, akin to Anderson’s
‘imagined communities’, are constructed and dependent solely on the desire for the
metabolic consumption of the aforementioned good(s) or idea. Through these spaces,
one produces an identity, namely through techniques of the body, as the body is an
instrument or tool to be fashioned and created; Foucault argues, technologies “permit
individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of
operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to
transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom,
perfection, or immortality” (1988 18) 46. Hence, through consumption practices,
individuals have the capacity to actively confect their identity through the assemblage
and re-assemblage of accoutrements that serve as contingencies in the articulation of

selfhood.

 

’6 Techniques of the body refer to corporeal modiﬁcations such as fashion, comportment, gait, and any
other body adornment, as a result of conforrnism or anti-conformisrn.

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The theorist Maffesoli in his work The Time of the Tribes presents an analysis of
heterogeneous fragments of contemporary society with respect to consumption; groups
that distinguish themselves by their shared lifestyles and tastes through cultures of
consumption. The term, tribes, is not intended to signify ‘tribes’ in the traditional
anthropological sense. Rather according to Maffesoli’s usage of the term, these neo-
tribes do not exemplify the longevity or the ﬁxity of traditional tribes. The community,
or tribe, that Maffesoli proposes is characterized less by a future project, than by a
communal sense of belonging". As Maffesoli asserts:

Overall, within massiﬁcation, processes of condensation are constantly

occurring through which more or less ephemeral tribal grouping are

organized which cohere on the basis of their own minor values, and which

attract and collide with each other in an endless dance, forming themselves

into a constellation whose vague boundaries are perfectly ﬂuid. (12)
Neo—tribes are marked by their ﬂuidity: they are locally concentrated, dispersed and
periodically assembled. Neo-tribes are momentary condensations in the ﬂux of everyday
consumer life. While they are fragile, ephemeral and unstable, they elicit intense
affective and emotive involvement from their members. Nevertheless, the inner
organization, aims and aspirations of neo-tribes are not important. Common desire is the
only purpose they require; in other words, there is no admission procedure. Neo-tribes
exist by virtue of individual decisions to “sport the insignia of tribal allegiance” (21).
The premise of Maffesoli’s argument recalls Anderson’s four basic tenets for the

deﬁnition of ‘imagined community’: imagined, limited, sovereign, and community.

 

’7 Maffesoli stresses that the communal belonging is not limited to being together physically, but rather
being-together in their desire for the consumption of ‘x, y, or z’.

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Cultures come into being due to numerous reasons: the advancement of
technologies, globalization, as well as the seductive capacity of the good; the power of
attraction to goods ‘X, Y, or Z’. Adela Cortina’s argument is fundamentally the same.
She parts from the argument of Veblen: a theorist who investigated in his work, T eoria
de la clase ociosa, the inﬂuence that the accommodated classes and their private
consumption had over the rest of society. He contended that not only did these
privileged groups consume visible goods but also induced consumption in the remaining
sectors through emulation, or the trickle down effect. Adela Cortina afﬁrms that this
does occur remarking:

Con esta revelacién Veblen, no solo abrio los ojos a la dimensién
simbélica de los objetos, sino que puso el dedo en la llaga de ese potente
motor del consumo que es el afan de situarse en un determinado grupo
social, irnitando para ello la forma en que ese grupo consume. (50)
Hence she emphasizes the symbolic reahn of consumption: the desire to emulate that
conditions our choice of goods. While noting that our consumption patterns are affected
by our desire to keep up with the Joneses, at the same time she probes deeper into this
phenomenon to evidence that consumption is socially consecrated: “Lo que importa. . .es
que conociendo motivaciones, sistemas de creencias, estilos de vida, <<elija desde su
propia identidad moral>>, y no desde voluntades ajenas, en qué estilos quiere insertarse,
cuales cree indispensable crear para una vida justa y buena” (51). While for some the
aspect of emulation is important, there is much more depth and intricacy to cultures of
consumption than mere emulation of the bourgeois. Cultures of consumption, rather, are

lifestyles associated with a more or less stable community that feeds off of shared rituals

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and norms, and are inﬂected with social order, and also share a language. Consequently,
these ways of life lend a social identity to individuals within the context of established
life forms. Cortina argues:

Los consumidores no forrnan una clase, ni tarnpoco diversas clases.

Se organizan en diversos estilos de vida, en los que se integran gentes de

forma poco cohesionada y con intereses diversos desde el punto de vista

profesional, intelectual, espiritual. (137)
By way of consuming one forms lifestyles. The goal of self-realization by way of
consumption is no longer dictated by caste nor bloodline, but stems from the continuous
shifts in consumer choices and options. One ceases to be simply deﬁned by work,
religion, or ethnicity; consumption, in a lucid manner, deﬁnes individual and social
identity and potentiates the formation of new ‘imagined communities’. To this end, the
theorist Maffesoli contends that aspects such as class, race, and age are no longer viable
to describe these groups, some being short-lived, and others traversing across existing
categories. As such, the individual is not static, but a ﬂuid subject which moves freely
across neo-tribes, modifying her interests and behaviors as she maneuvers. Furthermore,
Maffesoli points to “the importance of the immaterial in the very heart of the material”
(11). In the process of joining tribes, the individual self-fashions (idea of the body as a
text that can be read) so as to create an identity within the tribe. He states:

Whether trendy exercises in sensory isolation, or various forms of

bodybuilding, or jogging, or Eastern techniques of one sort or another, the

body is being constructed as a value, even to the extent of its epiphany.

...Note, however, that even in its most private aspects, the body is being

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constructed only in order to be seen; it is theatralized to the highest degree.
Within advertising, fashion, dance, the body is adorned only to be made
into a spectacle. (18-19) 48
The body converts to a commodity to be read by the masses through the adoption of one
form of lifestyle or another. This is further reinforced in Cortina’s argument:
A partir de los aﬁos cincuenta del siglo XX surge un conjunto de grupos
que se visten, calzan, escuchan mirsica, viaj an 0 se divierten de una forma
determinada. Y precisamente a través de su peculiar forma de consumir es
como <<expresan>> su identidad y, sobre todo, como se <<forjan>> su
identidad: los patrones de consumo constituyen e1 mecanismo de
inclusiOn y de exclusién del grupo. . .(98)
Cortina essentially reiterates Maffesoli’s claim regarding the commodiﬁcation of the
body engendered by consumption practices, which suppose intimate ties with a particular
community, albeit temporal. Amando de Miguel, in his second survey of the Spanish
youth undertaken in 1998, noted the proliﬁc existence of neo-tribes in the Spanish
culture, constructed and perpetuated by the consumption of particular material goods.
Hoy dia, cada grupo etaneo tiene sus modas y un tipo de atuendos
determinados. Los j6venes en concreto, sufren los efectos del
<<marquismo>> y el <<fetichismo>>. Esto es, gustan de consumir mas
que ropa, marcas determinadas. La marca es sirnbolo de exclusividad, de

prestigio y por tanto de clase. (174)

 

’8 The notion of self-fashion has been treated by many scholars, including theorists who view the
phenomenon from a position of sexual difference such as Entwistle and McRobbie.

111

Through sporting name brands or consuming a range of goods, youths are expressing
themselves via a series of operations and practices that not only serve as articulation
points for individual identity, but also determine social associations and groups. Thus the
consumer looks for a reference group — imagined community - one for which she has a
particular afﬁnity. However, one cannot speak in unilateral terms; there exist many
groups, one carrying no more prestige than another.
Los grupos de referencia pueden seguir siendo el grupo burgués
adinerado, los Vanderbilt, los Rius, o bien la aristocracia, pero tarnbién
pueden formarlos los ejecutivos agresivos, patrén de la poblacidn yuppy,
los artistas y modelos de la prensa del corazén, los politicos mediaticos, de
los que se sabe c6mo veranean, qué tipo de casas tienen y cOmo las
decoran, los deportistas de éxito, o sencillamente los vecinos, familiares y
compaﬁeros de trabajo, que adquieren nuevas cosas y hay que estar a su
altura, a la altura de los Garcia. (76)
Cortina maintains that the individual perpetually desires to imitate the upper echelon of
society, however, this view results superﬁcial and also tends towards the essential. There
exists reference groups, tribes, or ‘imagined communities’ that may also be denominated
counterculture. Groups that embody counterculture practices seek to resist identiﬁcation
with society’s prescribed norms. Perhaps they achieve this through body dressing that is
anti-establishment such as jeans, ripped T-shirts, and army boots. Other groups may
speak out against war, capitalism, and other vices of our technological society. As
Twitchell contends: “Expressions of material discontent, far from being an indication of

decline [of consumer society], are the way a consumer society balances conﬂicting

112

demands and indulges different behaviors” (3). Through their boycott of prescriptions of
mass consumption society or their choice to be anti-materialist, they still remain
consumers. Thus, ‘imagined communities’ or reference groups are diverse and multiply
constantly. As such, each group maintains a distinct way of life that necessitates different
forms of consumption.

In the study of cultures of consumption and the various neo-tribes that emerge
consequently, it is important to note that these practices of self-fashioning, as postulated
by Maffesoli, do not result in greater individuation or privatization of the body but rather
the opposite. While the theorist Maffesoli provides a comprehensive study of the
concept of the neo-tribe, beginning with its historicity through the present-day, he arrives
at political conclusions that do not recognize the experience of the individual feminine
subject on various levels, opting instead to discuss the proliferation of neo-tribes within
the purely social realm. With the rise of neo-tribes, Maffesoli suggests that there has
been a decline of individualism in mass society. “As for the metaphor of the tribe, it
allows us to account for the process of dis-individuation, the saturation of the inherent
function of the individual and the emphasis on the role that each person is called upon to
play within the tribe “(6). Nevertheless, his theory neglects to acknowledge issues such
as sexual difference, self-affectivity, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the mode in
which these corresponding dynamics unravel within neo-tribes.

In sum, not only do I agree with the theories postulated by Anderson and
Maffesoli; they provide strong evidence for the idea that each subject belongs in a loose
sense to ‘imagined communities’ or multiple neo-tribes, by which she partakes in

collective experiences that serve as a locus for the articulation of identity. Each feminine

113

subject frmctions as part of a whole, however, each feminine subject still operates as an
individual self, an active ‘ﬁguration’ composed of a multiplicity of selves, the not-one. In
that vein, she is the owner of her experiences, stories, and her body, which not only
disqualify her from a mass identiﬁcation but also pave the way towards an embodiment
of the nomadic subject. Having said this, it is important to note that this investigation is
not postulating Woman as a monolithic and homogeneous group, thereby essentializing
the feminine. Rather, each subject acting as consumer traverses through spaces, albeit
collective, yet comes to embody the multiplicity of the feminist subject through the

working through of experiences coupled with the awakening of her consciousness.

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BECOMING: FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY, CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION, AND
EMBODIMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY SPANISH NOVEL
VOLUME 11
By

Candice L. Bosse

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Spanish and Portuguese Department

2005

Chapter III: Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas: the Rebel, the Cyborg, and the
Housewife

Cultural Context

Of Basque origin, the author Lucia Etxebarria was born in Valencia, Spain, in
1966. At a later date, she re-located to Madrid where she currently resides in the old
working-class Lavapies neighborhood. Due to these shifts in territorial location within
Spain, Etxebarria has gleaned a unique perspective, one of distance, on what it means to
be a woman living in contemporary Spain. She afﬁrms: “Este no ser de aqui y no ser de
alla me ha negado la conciencia de una identidad nacional y me ha proporcionado, en
contrapartida, una arnplitud de miradas a la hora de exarninar nacionalismos, sexismos,
extrenrismos, chauvinismos y otros ismos, derivada de la distancia irnpuesta”
(http://www.ctv.es/USERS/pabriirurn/cero/bioluciahtml). Etxebarria’s scholastic career
took place at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid where she earned a degree in
journalism and English philology, while her professional background encompasses a
mosaic of jobs ranging from a waitress to translator and an interpreter to a gopher in a
musical production company. The literary course of this author began with Aguanta esta,
a book that treats the origins of the grunge movement through the optic of the
problematic relationship of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love”. Etxebarria began to
receive recognition for her writing with the publication of her ﬁrst novel, Amor,
curiosidad, prozac y dudas (1997) that was initially titled Exceso de testosterona, later

changed due to the opposition on part of the publishing house. She has been awarded

 

’9 In 2004, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the suicide of Cobain, Etxebarria was asked to re-edit
this book. Charged with this task, the author not only edited Aguanta esto, omitting outdated information,
but also added a second part in which she elaborates upon the notion of society as spectacle (Debord,
Baudrillard) whereby representation does not necessarily corroborate with reality.

115

many esteemed literary prizes such as the Premio Nada] in 1998 for her third book
Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes and the Premio Primavera in 2001 for De todo lo visible y
lo invisible. Other works of Etxebarria include: Nosotras, que no somos como las demds
(1999), La Eva futura (2000), La letrafutura (2000), En brazos de la mujerfétiche co-
written with Sonia Nr'rﬁez Puente (2002), and Una historia de amor como cualquiera
(2003). She has also published a collection of poetry entitled Estacién de inﬁerno in
2001 as well as co-written several movie scripts such as Sobreviviré (1999), Amor,
curiosidad, prozac y dudas (2001), I love you baby (2001), and La mujer de mi vida
(2001) 5".

The literary production of this author provides a fecund landscape to investigate
the output of contemporary women writers in Spain. Her position is not exceptional as
she was a child of the Franco regime and Spent her formative years, that is to say her
youth, in transition between two contrary worlds: dictatorship and democracy. Hence, it
is interesting to analyze how Etxebarria, and other women born at this time, envision the
identity and role of woman in contemporary Spanish society. The intense shifts
experienced by Lucia Etxebarria, not only territorial relocation but also serious
transformations in the political paradigm which resonated from top to bottom, accords the
reader with a credible measure of change. As a youth, the writer was witness to the

evolving roles and identity of woman. From the transition and beyond, she further

 

5° In September of 2001, Lucia Etxebarria was accused of plagarism by the magazine Interviu for Estacio'n
de Inﬁerno. According to Interviu, Etxebarria extracted many words and phrases of the Galician poet
Antonio Colinas, for whom she has a special affinity, and made them her own. Colinas was also
interviewed by the magazine and noted the striking correspondence among his work and that of Etxebarria,
yet implored the reader to arrive at her own conclusion with respect to the intertextuality of the two works.
For her part, Etxebarria professes a sincere admiration for the Galician that has only multiplied due to his
comportment in this matter. For extra information, see the following web pages: http://www.el-
mundo.es/2001/10/02/cultura/1054828-imp.html and
http://www.5dias.com/especiales/especiales/Z00llespecialesZOOl/html/cuthtml.

116

attested to the numerous struggles facing women, as woman was deemed a legal equal of
man under the 1978 Constitution. Yet in practice woman does not achieve full
emancipation due to a hodge-podge of factors such as oppressive societal norms
stemming from a society steeped in machismo. As a result of her socially lived
experience, consistent among the work of Lucia Etxebarria is the perpetual questioning of
the traditional hierarchy of knowledge in conjunction with the turning upside down and
inside out of conventional categories. In doing so this author highlights the ﬂuidity of
identity in our postmodern era as well as proposes alternative spaces for the female
subject. In the study of this writer’s production, the portrayal of female subjectivity is
analyzed through the optic of consumption, focusing on various cultures such as drugs,
music, fashion, sex, and technology. Concomitantly, the investigation will explore the
resulting embodiment that emerges vis-a-vis the personal election of the consumer.

If we keep in mind Braidotti’s framework of the nomadic subject, we note the
multiplicity of feminine postures that Etxebarria creates in her literary production; each a
territory in which women occupy, negotiate, and shift the notion of the self. In Lucia
Etxebarria’s writing, we see the nomadic subject wandering and fashioning her identity in
accord with her particular social reality. Some of the protagonists, such as Cristina
Gaena in the novel Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas, are active agents conscious of the
power system in which they maneuver and as such exploit these spaces to their beneﬁt.
While others, such as her sister Ana, a married housewife with one child, gloriﬁes her
pursuit of happiness through the absorption of the ideology disseminated by the Franco
regime and its female sector the Seccién F emenina of ‘Angel del hogar’, yet on the other

hand feels trapped by this traditional prescribed feminine role. Nevertheless, all of the

117

characters, through contemplation and working through (Braidotti’s emphasis)
experiences, reach a consciousness of self, resulting in various ﬁgurations, and arrive at
the embodiment of nomadic feminist subjects.
This chapter explores the dynamics of the Gaena sisters - Cristina, Rosa, and Ana

- to ﬂesh out the multiplicity of the female subject. When the novel was published in the
late 1990s, Spain had already hosted key international events that not only brought them
important worldwide recognition but also led to the inﬂux within Spain of a globalization
of cultures. According to Francisca L6pez:

Para muchos espafloles, 1992 marcaba simbOlicamente la culminacién de

un proceso de renovacién, dada 1a convergencia en tal aﬁo de una serie de

acontecimientos de diversos grados de relevancia a nivel intemacional:

las celebraciones del quinto centenario, Madrid como capitalidad europea

de la cultura y Barcelona y Sevilla como sedes de los Juegos Olimpicos y

de la Exposicién Mundial, respectivamente. Tales acontecimientos

ayudan a lograr e1 reconocimiento de esta Espaila modema fuera de

nuestras fronteras y este reconocimiento reﬁrerza, a su vez, 1a propia

identiﬁcacién con los procesos de la modernidad a nivel local. (1)
The combination of the aforementioned events - economic development, new political
paradigms, and ﬂuid contacts with the exterior — propelled the acceleration of socio-
cultural transformations, which begun in the late years of the Franco regime and resulted
in a new order which supposed new challenges for subject formation. By way of this
analysis, various cultures of consrunption will be called into question, each a fundamental

component through which the respective protagonists establish a notion of home. This

118

exploration brings to the forefront the paradigm of the politics of location and the various
neo-tribes or ‘imagined communities’ to which these women subscribe, that consequently
inﬂuence the embodiment of each female subject. In the process of becoming-woman as
postulated by Rosi Braidotti, the starting point for this conversion is the politics of
location, which implies a critique of dominant ideologies and identities in which the
concept and detenninacy of Woman is codiﬁed. The central argument is that each
woman traverses through varied spaces or territories that run parallel to the selected
cultures of consumption and thus unfold into personal lived experiences and stories. As a
result of the interconnection of experiences and knowledge gained along the journey,
each woman arises to a consciousness of self and comes to embody the nomadic feminist
subject.

From the inception of its publication in 1997, the novel Amor, curiosidad, prozac
y dudas achieved great success and launched its author, Lucia Etxebarria, into the orbit of
immediate fame, which was echoed into its movie adaptation in 200151. A platform for
revolutionary ideas in a conservative world, through the novel Etxebarria reveals her
controversial and transgressive personality. The work, dedicated to women at the end of
the twentieth century, hooks the reader from the beginning to the end, bearing a plot that
diverges into three stories: one for each of the Gaena sisters. Written in colloquial style,
the novel employs explicit language and vulgar terms evidenced ﬁ'om the opening of the

ﬁrst chapter in which Cristina describes one of her disappointing sexual experiences with

 

5 1 It must be mentioned that alongside Interviri ’s accusation against Etxebarria for plagarism of the Galician
Antonio Colina, the magazine suggested that the novel under discussion bears a striking similarity to
Prozac Nation to the point of plagarism It was published in 1994 in English by the Rolling Stone
journalist Elizabeth Wurtzel, and was translated into Spanish in 1995.

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a guy who “10 tenia minr’rsculo” (13) 52. The three sisters narrate fragments of their life;
these fractions are divided into chapters whose titles are especially seductive: in
alphabetical order, each chapter begins with a letter and a word bearing that particular
letter. For instance, the ﬁrst chapter carries the title “A de atipica”, the second is entitled
“B de bajén”, and this continues through the entire alphabet until the ﬁnal chapter “Z de
zenit”. The reader of the novel is addressed as a woman who shares the protagonists
divergent lifestyles of shopping, capitalism, and the underground bar scene. Often
written in the ﬁrst person, their tone is one of shared conﬁdences. The reader is assumed
to be an adept consumer, to have a familiarity with designer labels, and is expected to
have the knowledge to recognize the sophisticated brand names that ﬁll the pages of this
novel. As such, the novel is written for women who are Skilled and experienced in
contemporary discourses of consumption. As Rachel Bowlby has outlined, consumption
has been associated with women since the development of the large department stores in
Europe in the late nineteenth century. Sean Nixon, in “Have You Got the Look?
Masculinities and Shopping Spectacle” extends this argument stating:
The very spectacle of consumption— the windows ﬁlled with goods, the
lighting, the displays, the other shoppers, the places to meet-has
historically been signaled as a feminine domain, and associated with
femininity. From the department stores at the turn of the century with
their clientele of middle-class ladies, to the ‘consuming housewife’ of
1950s advertising, the dominant imagined addressee of the languages of

consumerism has been unmistakably feminine. Consumption, associated

 

’2 While the vocabulary utilized may be vulgar, it illustrates succinctly the social lived reality of Spain in
the last decade of the twentieth century.

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with the body, beautiﬁcation and adornment in particular, has historically
spoken to a feminine consumer, producing her as an ‘active consumer’ but
also as a ‘spectacle’ herself (151)
The protagonists of this novel are certainly active consumers, but not only in the interest
of creating themselves as ‘spectacle’. Their pleasure in consumption is not limited to
fashion and cosmetics for their own adornment, but extends to the consumption of ideas,
men, technology, and aesthetics; these aforementioned items become contingencies for
the formation of female subjectivity through the subject’s active process of negotiation

and re-appropriation of meaning.

Cristina Gaena: From the Multinational to Planeta X: the Consumption and
Embodiment of Counterculture

Cristina Gaena, the youngest of the sisters, is a single, twenty-four year-old
English philology student and waitress at Planeta X. As the youngest of the siblings,
Cristina experienced a unique forrnation- in comparison with her sisters- in that she was
not as susceptible, nor easily swayed by discourses of Truth. Unlike her older sisters Rosa
(30 years old) and Ana (32), Cristina’s generation was not raised beneath the pressures
and extreme inﬂuences of the Franco regime, hence, the notion of tradition - from the
macroscopic to the microscopic level - stood in stark contrast to her lived reality (belief
system). From infancy, her generation has witnessed the conﬂuence of the global and the
local; as LOpez contends “la inmensa mayoria de sus [Cristina] referencias culturales, de
peliculas a grupos musicales, actores y actrices, son extranj eras; su lenguaj e esta plagado
de palabras en inglés (broker, overachiever, patchwork, grunge, etc) y de expresiones de

este idioma directamente traducidas a1 espafiol” (13). The inﬂux and saturation of

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foreign culture in Spain has virtually created a dynamic space within which to question
and negotiate the role and sustainable importance of convention in Spanish society.
Throughout her story, Cristina, non-conformist and rebellious to explicit authority,
develops as a contentious individual in deﬁant opposition to grand narratives. She
quickly criticizes the code of morality that the ‘monjas’ imposed in school and without
hesitation will target psychology and its dogma: “. . .los psicoanalistas creen que tus
problemas pueden arreglarse si logras aislar el Gran Porqué, Si logras encontrar e1 hecho
particular que te convirtio en lo que eres” (278), a ﬁeld in which she claims to be well-
versed, as her mother sent her to a range of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists due to her
“problemas mentales” (176) with regularity throughout her childhood. The twenty-four
year old astutely attributes her problems to the same factors that may have catalyzed her
older sisters’ issues: the abandonment of the Gaena father at an early age and, particular
to Cristina, the purported sexual abuse she suffered from her cousin Gonzalo, thirteen
years her senior. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that unlike her sisters whom both
regularly consume an arsenal of prescribed chemical enhancements, she reﬁrses to accept
the potential validity of claims offered by the psychiatric institution, perhaps viewing
their discourse through an optic of Oppression, that is their possible colonization and
subsequent erasure of her self, much like the totalitarian control of the Franco regime.
The two issues — the rejection from her father and “violation” by her cousin-
shaped profoundly Cristina’s conception and enactment of her sexuality. As the novel
opens, Cristina makes a dual confession: 1) that it has been one month since She broke

up with her boyfriend Iain, with whom she had an intense sexual relationship and 2) she

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just had her ﬁrst sexual experience since Iain, which resulted botched for multiple
reasons.
En primer lugar, lo tenia minusculo. . .Total, que lo hicimos de la forma
tradicional, enroscados y babosos como anguilas. Nuestras pelvis
entrechocaban una y otra vez. . .pero aquel micromiembro se restregaba
patéticamente en mi entrepiema, resbalando una y otra vez entre mis
labios, y cada nuevo empujén no era sino otro intento vano por
introducirse en una sima cuya hondura — de dimensidn y de apetito — 1e
superaba. (14)
This vivid description reveals her consciousness and perhaps assertion in the
appropriation of her sexuality. The choice of words used to describe both the male and
female genitalia categorize them through oppositions; yet, the binary dialect employed
transgresses - in some ways - the traditional conception of male/female sexuality. He is
“minr'rsculo”, lacking creativity, and pathetic; she, however, surpasses him not only in
size but also in her voracious appetite. Throughout her personal narrative, Cristina makes
reference to her desire and almost addictive need for sex: “necesito una polla entre las
piemas” (39). Etxebarria employs the myth of the femme fatale, the woman who devours
men, manifest in Cristina. Yet, she does not simply consider the woman in black-and-
white categories, rather Cristina embodies a twist of this myth; she has a super-charged
sexual appetite, not normally associated with women, but is not diabolical nor scandalous
in her efforts; she is a woman feeling a sense of emptiness in the accelerated culture
surrounding her. Thus, aware of how the economy of desire functions as well as her

power, Cristina works from the margins to achieve the desired effect. This ranges from

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II

I...

 

sexual games with lovers to attempted suicides53

. Self-destruction represents a form of
manipulation used to control those who surrounded her. This patchwork of revelations
exempliﬁes the narrative of Cristina’s life and also lends evidence to her dynamic nature
of working through experiences via the continual interrogation of universal truths.

Prior to obtaining the waitress job at Planeta X, Cristina worked for a
multinational corporation translating documents into English and then sending them to
various technological magazines. In that capacity, Cristina, unlike her Older sister Rosa,
experienced an absence, a loss of her self replaced by the advances in technology. In the
chapter “C de curro”, she offers her understanding of the capitalist setting, citing that
progress “ha superado al Dios original en todo, incluso en crueldad” (33). Lépez argues
that Cristina quickly learns the two rhetorical strategies fundamental to the success of the
capitalist rationale: “1) e1 esfuerzo sera reconocido y se traducira en la mejora de estatus
y sueldo y 2) por cada empleado hay cuatro parados dispuestos a hacer lo que sea
necesario para conseguir un puesto” (14). The ideology espoused by this paradigm runs
in complete opposition to Cristina’s dissident nature and her utter aversion to the growing
afﬁnity among technology and humans, which emerged internationally as a result of the
globalization of cultures and instant ability for communication. She states:

Controlaba perfectarnente térrninos como interface, tarjeta VGA,

puerto paralelo, driver, puerto de serie b, slot de 16 bits, ﬁltros digitales

para audio, transferencia térmica de cera o micrOprocesador. Me pasaba

 

5’ Cristina and Iain used to experiment with a number of S & M devices; likewise, the ﬁrst time they were
together sexually, Cristina allowed him to blindfold her to intensify their experience.

Cristina attempted suicide a handful of times via alternate methods. The ﬁrst time she ingested Pacharan,
which is a powerful and sweet liquor from the Basque region; interestingly, her mother — a take on Lorca’s
Bernarda Alba - also hails from this province. Hence in swilling Pacharan, she hoped to hurt her mother.
The second time Cristina cut herself beginning at her waist and ending at her ankles, however, she was
found just in time by her sister Ana.

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alli la vida, sentada en mi cubiculo, mi punto de engorde, un espacio de

apenas dos metros cuadrados acotado por dos mesas de forrnica dispuestas

en forma de ele. (30)
The politics of location is entangled by many factors: physical dimensions, feelings of
being enclosed, and the emotional element. As Cristina illustrates, the multinational
dehumanized her existence, technologically colonizing her self. This is evidenced
through her emphasis on the de-naturalized human space “los cubiculos” and “punto de
engorde” (33) of the capitalist empire, again pointing to the politics of location.
Moreover, she criticizes this male-centered site signaling lack of space, poor lighting, and
a meager salary“. Nevertheless, her male boss who “cobraba un millOn de pesetas a1
mes” (31) earned eleven times her salary to chit-chat with his ‘girl of the month’ which
changed as frequently as one switches perfume. Cristina argues: “se pasaba el dia
llamando por teléfono a su arnante de turno, porque las iba cambiando como cambiaba de
colonia: Davidoff, Fahrenheit, Calvin Klein, Ana, Lucia, Loreto. . . ihay que estar siempre
a la ultima!” (31). From her discourse, she further suggests the role consumer culture has
inﬁltrated and commodiﬁed all arenas of life: from products such as perfume to humans;
we are not just purchasing a material good, rather a series of packaged images and people
circulate as commodities. Furthermore, this boss who possesses a Master’s degree could
not speak English nor be bothered with his accent marks in Spanish; this remained
Cristina’s responsibility. Yet, by virtue of being born male, he is the “ganador de la

loteria demograﬁca” (31). From Cristina’s perspective, the environment of the capitalist

 

5‘ Cristina continues on her diatribe against capitalism describing in detail the parallels among the ofﬁce
workers and a herd of cattle.

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regime embodies artiﬁcial, de-humarrized, machine-like qualities, consequently codiﬁed
in the subject’s. She states,
Se me jodio la vista a cuenta de pasarme los dias forzandola,
cegada por la luz fantasmal del ordenador, y la claridad excesiva
de las lémparas halégenas y la constante inclinacién forzada sobre
el teclado me provocaron unos dolores de espalda espantosos. Dos
dioptrias y escoliosis, asi de golpe. (30)
The job at the multinational enterprise not only affected, but also structured her life, as
she started at 8:00 AM and did not return until 8:30 PM, completely exhausted. As such,
per Cristina, her life was devoid of quality. While Cristina had many legitimate reasons
for leaving her position, the motivating factor was the despotic practices of the
“compaftia machista”. Cristina afﬁrms:
Lqué coﬁo hago you aqui? LQUE CONO? Fue 1a llegada de aquella
subnorrnal proﬁmda, que acababa todas sus frases con un gsabes? Y para
la que todo era como muy ideal o como muy algo, lo que me convencié de
que me habian estafado, de que estaban enganandome como a un burro
con el viejo truco de la zanahoria y el palo, y una mafiana que bajé a la
farmacia a comprar buscapinas porque ya no podia con aquel dolor de
espalda, e1 sol me dio en la cara para avisarme de que estaba malgastando
mi vida, la r’mica vida de que dispongo, porque soy una mujer y no un

gato, y cai en la cuenta de que llevaba dos aﬁos sin sentir la caricia dorada

 

’5 The manner in which Etxebarria describes the environment of the multinational alludes strongly to
Douglas Coupland’s Generation X. One can note parallels among the terminology utilized to describe
today’s info-laden culture and the resulting embodiment of these elements among the protagonists.

126

del sol en la mariz, de que se me estaba yendo la juventud encerrada en un

despacho de ventanales blindado. .. (3 3)
After profound realizations, she purposefully entered work one day, hit “<<Delete All>>”
(34) and walked out on her job certain, liberated, and utterly ecstatic. This deﬁning
poignant moment in shift in location points to a shift in the self, a resistance — one that is
particularly active - and demonstrates her ability and desire to work through her
experiences to her beneﬁt, to arrive at a feminist embodiment of self. No longer willing
to be codiﬁed according to the tenets — logic, rationalism, technology, and absence of
affect —- of our affected, accelerated culture, Cristina seeks to explore and deﬁne her own
identity in a distinct territory. As Gottdiener qualiﬁes, spaces of consumption are
articulation points of individual psychology, social pressures, the media, fashion, and the
realization of belonging. Hence, the pursuit of a distinctive lifestyle through an alternate
via of consumption may represent a means of developing a sense of self and of
actualizing identity politics; it can be seen as an emancipatory process, each choice
indicating resistance, subversion, and empowerment.

This history of Cristina leads to an exploration of the proxemics of the rave
culture as seen in her current place of employment, Planeta X. As her personal narrative
indicates, ﬁrst and foremost, it must be noted that Cristina leaves a patriarchal institution
for another: the location of the multinational corporation for the underground bar;

however, immersed in this space she feels empowered and liberated“. All the while, she

 

5" On Etxebarria’s personal web page, http://teleline.terra.es/personal/luciaetx/mundo.htm, She unmasks the
traditional concept of knowledge and the patriarchal institutions that are founded on these principles.
Furthermore, she cites statistics on gender inequalities; concretely, she treats the unequal job practices
reﬂected around the globe. She argues,
las mujeres representan la mitad de la poblacién mundial, cubren cerca de dos tercios del
total de horas de TRABAJO, reciben 1a décima parte de los INGRESOS y poseen menos
del 1% de los BIENES. ..En el mundo, solo e12% de los EJECUTIVOS de alto nivel son

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is an active agent, embodying nomadic subjectivity, because of her understanding of the
dynamics of the power system coupled with her ability to appropriate this territorial shift
to her advantage. She confesses, “Parezco la Kate Moss, pero con tetas. Muy grunge,
muy trendy. Por algo soy camarera, porque a los tios les gusto. Muy machista, lo sé, pero
de algo hay que comer, 0, en mi caso, no comer. Lo siento mucho, la vida es asi, no la he
inventado yo” (3 7). Interestingly, she cites verses from a popular song of the eighties,
“El jardin prohibido”, written by Sandro Giacobbe; the melody, entrenched with
masculine tones, is dedicated to his girlfriend whom he just betrayed by sleeping with her
best friend. His response to her is: “Lo siento mucho, la vida es asi. No la he inventado
yo”. With glaring irony, Cristina quotes this popular saying to explain her position and
movements within the power paradigm. She acutely recognizes the dynamics of the
hegemonic economy, yet her quote irnplicity hints at her exploitation of the system
through her own means.

As Braidotti posits in Patterns of Dissonance, men have maintained and
authorized control over the feminine through the power of the patriarchy, or the power of
the father (Braidotti). This paradigm of power subjugates women to masculine
domination through the symbolic such as traditions, language, myths and the socio-
political, which effectively has silenced the female and converted her into an object
without a concrete exchange value. Irigaray afﬁrms these ideas as she contends:

In our social order, women are ‘products’ used and exchanged by men.

Their status is that of merchandise. . .Women’s social inferiority is

 

mujeres, pero solo e1 5% de los puestos de socio en los bufetes privados estﬁn ocupados
por ellas. . .En la Real Academia de la Lengua Espaﬁola hay 45 hombres y una mujer,
Ana Maria Matute. La Academia indica en sus Estatutos que deberan ﬁgurar,
obligatoriamente, como miembros, al menos un cardenal y un militar.
(http://teleline.terra.es/personal/luciaetx/mundo.htrn)

128

reinforced and complicated by the fact that woman does not have access to
language, except through recourse to ‘masculine’ systems of
representation. (223)

To escape this symbolic violence of the masculine paradigm in which man is not the
enemy but rather the phallocracy, Braidotti calls for the opening of new paths for
contemplation; one which, in her words, does “. . .not conceptualize the feminist position
as that of the ‘guerrillera’ ﬁghting a holy war” (279). But rather, she envisions as
fundamental the necessity for the rethinking and redeﬁnition of the subject. “As in
postmodernism, the conceptual challenge consists in upholding the idea of the subject as
a dazzling collection of integrated fragments, while also defending the speciﬁcity of the
female subject as a theoretical, libidinal, ethical and political agent” (282). Working
with this conceptual framework, Braidotti conceives of the notion of sexual difference as
delineating the absence of symmetry among the sexes which subsequently raises the
question of women in terms of the modiﬁcations and merits they carry to a culture
embedded in crisis. Elaborated in these terms, She offers a radical alternative to the
centrality of the masculine economy, purporting that female subjectivity, or the process
of becoming-woman in postmodern times, entails a type of ﬂuid nomadism that seeks to
question from the position of sexual difference, dominant identities as well as
conventional power structures. She afﬁrms:

This possibly enables them to make a breach in the code of symbolic
representation. In the name of the repressed, which is where they have

been positioned, women are capable of producing a ‘boomerang effect’,

129

opening the way to the return of the repressed, that is, to new forms of
representation. (279)
In consideration of Braidotti’s theories, we may conclude that Cristina’s rejection of the
culture of the multinational and subsequent immersion in the culture of the rave,
redeﬁnes the embodied nature of ‘Woman’ or Cristina. She possesses no notion of
changing the power system, but rather works within this structure to her beneﬁt, as
evidenced through her representation. She is dynamic and in transit.

It must be noted that in raves, cultures of consumption, musical production, event
distribution, and hence proﬁt-making are predominantly qualiﬁed as male sites of
experience. Nevertheless I agree it represents a liberating experience, and is one that can
be seen as positive in feminist terms. To begin with, Cristina earns more as a waitress in
this environment than she did while working in the multinational. Likewise, this
profession imposes fewer constraints on her time; she now assumes ownership of her life.

En el bar gano mas de lo que ganaba en aquella oﬁcina, y mis mahanas
son para mi, para mi sola, y el tiempo libre vale para mi mas que los
mejores sueldos del mundo. No me arrepiento en absoluto de la decisién
que tomé, y nunca, nunca jama's volveria a trabajar en una multinacional.
Antes me meto a puta. (34)
Her words exemplify a profound understanding of power dynamics as well as her ability
and intense desire to work through her experiences to her beneﬁt. While some may read
“Antes me meto a puta” as a mere phrase, upon consideration, the declaration reveals:
she is conscious that she maneuvers within a patriarchal economy, and as such, she

participates within the economy, yet on her terms. The vocalization of the fact that she

130

would rather earn money for sex than prostitute herself to the capitalist masculine
dominated society clearly demonstrates her utter despisal of being a mere pawn of
capitalism. Futhennore, it may represent a critique of the exploitation of women’s labor
within the capitalist system. Being a prostitute, then, is better than a ‘multinational’
prostitute. Here is emphasized the issue of agency, even if this could represent a
submission to the symbolic. While both options remain within the realm of the
patriarchy, and could be read by some feminist scholars as submission to the symbolic
order, I view Cristina’s consideration of her job as a waitress as well as her joke
regarding becoming a ‘puta’ as professions (she still remains within the dominant
economy) that permit her to exploit the masculine economy to her advantage, as well as
access active female agency. That is to say, she is not a prisoner of a cubicle that has the
same dimension as a veal pen; likewise, she has an abundance of free time which she
appropriates as she feels necessary.
...que me mola ser una camarera y no veo nada de malo en ello por mucho
que mis hermanas se empeﬂen en decir que deberia dedicarme a algo mas
serio. Por 10 general les respondo que si pudiera ya lo haria, que no soy
tonta. Y tengo que dejar claro que, a1 contrario de lo que la mayoria de la
gente cree, lo de ser camarera en un bar de moda no quiere decir que sea
idiota, no senor, que asi tengo mas tiempo para leer 0 para acabar mi tésis
que si me dedicara a otra cosa, y de momento estoy muy a gusto con mi
trabajo, aunque no tenga seguridad social ni contrato ﬁjo ni estabilidad de
ningr'm tipo, ni esos detalles que tanto valoran mis hermanas. Pero, qué

coﬁo, es un trabajo, y me da para vivir, que es lo importante. (20)

131

It is interesting to note how Cristina embodies her job on an affectual level. Whereas in
the multinational, she exuded the principles of the information saturated culture such as
rationalism and logic, her body and self metamorphose in a distinct manner in
conjunction with the location of the bar. She describes herself within this space stating:
“Y aqui estoy ahora, en mi bar del alrna, en este bar que para mis herrnanas supone la
mayor vergiienza social, limpiando botellas con la energia de un huracan” (42). What is
signiﬁcant, then, is that through her expressions of capitalist malcontent, she is not
indicating a rejection of consumption; rather, She is balancing paradoxical demands and
indulging in behaviors particular to the community with which she ﬁnds afﬁnity.

The physical space of the rave culture which emerges from the chic bar scene of
Planeta X gives rise to an alternative female subjectivity, one that partakes in the
maximization of auto-erotic pleasure stemming from more intimate levels of
involvement. Cristina reveals,

En los escasos momentos en que la barra queda vacia cierro

los ojos e intento concentrarrne en los sonidos sintetizados,

visualizando la musica como una cebolla iridiscente a la que yo,

lenta y concienzuda, voy arrancando capas, una tras otra, hasta dar

con una diseflada especialrnente para mi: el regalo de la rave. (35)
In consuming the rave culture, her experience signals how her body becomes a home. It
is a location - a site of liberation- in which the sounds and the music are a meditation that
ﬂow through the body providing a mental bliss. The penetration of these accoutrements
provokes the disintegration of the bound female, suggesting the unraveling of the barriers

of the body that subsequently permits Cristina to delve into the profundity of her self.

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While material goods possess a sign value, their consumption is a mode of self-
expression embodied on the textual subject, which must not simply be understood as
“ravaging”. Rather, I suggest a shift in the understanding of consumption that entails a
re-examination of the active female role. As an illustration, the rave culture in which
Cristina participates demonstrates how the feminine subject is an agent who can enact
change and evolution. That is, we must look at the shifts as experiences that go far
beyond symbols or mere images of pleasure. Rachel Bowlby argues for a rethinking in
the relationship among consumption and the female underlining that “Consumption. . .has
offered women new areas of authority and expertise, new sources of income, a new sense
of consumer right; and one of the consequences of these developments has been a
heightened awareness of entitlement outside the sphere of consumption” (16). From this
point of view, Bowlby understands the realm of consumption two-fold: as a territory in
which one can negotiate and resist the passive feminine identity and also as the ongoing
process of identity creation that embodies the nomadic subject. With respect to cultures
of consumption, this analysis provides a foundation for becoming-woman or the feminist
subject. In particular, it is springboard to illustrate how the rave scene affords women
like Cristina a libidinal return on their investment that is often experienced as positive
and liberating. While she is not earning the astronomical salary of her sister Rosa, nor
does she have the luxurious privileges of Ana, her oldest sister, through consumption of
experiences and goods, Crisitina illustrates patently Bowlby’s afﬁrmation of women’s
heightened consciousness of legirrritacy outside of consuming conventional doctrine.

This leads us to an analysis of the rave assemblage in the culture of Planeta X

“ese espacio tecniﬁcado y cyberchic que constituye e1 escenario de mis noches” (121).

133

The ﬁrst component is time; the events at the bar occur at night. Followed by time, we
must consider the space or layout of the venue, and ﬁnally the body and how it is used;
for instance, the dancing, emotion, and use of drugs which occur in the venue. Cristina
clearly describes the aforementioned material and discursive elements as they work upon
and produce her self. She states:
Y cuando la [la rave] encuentro, la hago ascender a través de mis venas,
mis capilares y mis arterias, recorrer mi cabeza mezclada con mi linfa mi
sangre, ascender hacia mi cabeza, inundarrne por completo. Me diluyo en
mr'rsica, me borro, me extiendo, me transformo, me vuelvo liquida y
polimorfa. De pronto llega un roll on, un carnbio radical de ritrno seguido
de una secuencia prolongada que comienza muy, muy lentarnente y luego
se acelera de forma paulatina hasta retomar el ritrno del techno, machacén.
Insistente, acompasado a los latidos del corazén. La oscuridad me invita a
dej arrne llevar y arrastra hacia el altavoz que vomita una musica
monétona, geométrica, energética y lineal, suavizada en mi cabeza por el
éxtasis. (35)
This dance-drug scene re-appropriates socially lived reality; it re-invents what anarchist
Hakim Bey describes as a “temporary autonomous zone”. Such zones, Bey suggests,
are “successful raids on consensus reality, breakthroughs into more intense and more
abundant life”. Its foremost artistic expression of the rave culture, the music, offers a
consistently transforming sonic narrative, enacting feelings that are beyond language. It
is depicted as a culture with options instead of rules. As Braidotti posits the process of

becoming-woman in postmodern times, entails a type of ﬂuid nomadism that seeks to

134

question from the position of sexual difference, dominant identities as well as
conventional power structures. Cristina’s total immersion into the rave culture redeﬁnes
her embodied nature as Woman. Within this context, she experiences a sense of
autonomy unknown to her within the capitalist conﬁnes of the multinational, evidenced
through the ﬂuidity of her body as it transforms in accordance with the free form of the
music.
The rave culture — embedded in energetic music that utilizes samplers to create
audio collages, ﬁ'agmenting visual stimuli and the drug ecstasy — is composed of a
collectivity that shares in the maximization of libidinal pleasure stemming from intimate
levels of involvement rooted in empathy and ﬁiendship. This reveals another intrigue
with respect to the production of the self: the neo-tribe or imagined community. The
theorist Maffesoli presents a deconstruction of conglomerate atomizations of
contemporary society that differentiate themselves via similar lifestyle and the desire for
the metabolic consumption of similar goods. According to Maffesoli’s usage of the term
neo-tribe, these groupings do not have longevity nor the ﬁxity of conventional tribes,
rather they share a communal belonging based upon the here and now:
...can we extrapolate and make a link with the puissance of the masses? I
believe it is legitimate to do so, especially since the essential characteristic
of religion, in its different manifestations, remains nevertheless intangible:
its transcendence. Whether it can be situated in a great beyond or whether
it is an ‘immanent transcendence’ (the group, the community transcending
individuals) does not alter the truth of the matter. My hypothesis, as

distinct from those who lament the end of great collective values and the

135

withdrawal into the self — which they falsely parallel with the growing
importance of everyday life — is that a new (and evolving) trend can be
found in the growth of small groups and existential networks. This
represents a sort of tribalism which is based at the same time on the spirit
of religion (re-ligare) and on localism (proxemics, nature). (40)
Imagined communities or neo-tribes are marked by their ﬂuidity: they are locally
concentrated, dispersed, and periodically assembled. Maffesoli points to the importance
of aesthetics or the immaterial in the heart of the material. In the process of joining
tribes, the individual self-fashions.
Whether trendy exercises in sensory isolation, or various forms of
bodybuildling. . .the body is being constructed as a value, even to the
extent of its epiphany. . .Note, however, that even in its most private
aspects, the body is being constructed only in order to be seen; it is
theatralized to the highest degree. Within advertising, fashion, dance, the
body is adorned only to be made into a spectacle. (18-19)
It is important to note that per Maffesoli, these practices of self-dressing do not result in
greater individuation nor privatization of the body but rather its opposite. He argues:
“As for the metaphor of the tribe, it allows us to account for the process of dis-
individuation, the saturation of the inherent ﬁmction of the individual and the emphasis
on the role that each person is called upon to play within the tribe” (6). I agree with his
theory in that each subject ﬂitters among multiple neo-tribes, by which she partakes in
collective experiences, as evidenced through the distinct proxemics of Cristina: the

multinational and Planeta X. Within each imagined community, the subject works within

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the whole yet each feminine subject functions as an individual self, an active
conﬁguration composed of a multiplicity of selves, the not-one. Maffesoli, however,
does not acknowlege aspects such as sexual difference, self-affectivity, embodiment, and
their corresponding dynamics within neo-tribes.

That said each feminine subject is the owner of her experiences, stories, and body,
which not only disqualify her from a totalizing mass identiﬁcation but also pave the way
towards an embodiment of the nomadic subject. Cristina’s engagement within the rave
culture reveals how this space represents a liberating positive experience. I consider the
narrative of Cristina’s experience as a member of this culture, elaborating upon the
material aspects such as the lights, music, drugs, as well as aspects of location, the body,
and affective manifestations. Through examining these elements, I contend that
Cristina’s experience within the rave is embodied in a dynamic nomadic subject. The
following quotation is a testimony to the discursive and material angles of the rave
culture.

El DJ es el nuevo mesias; la musica, la palabra de Dios; el

vino de los cristianos ha sido sustituido por el éxtasis y la

iconograﬁa de las vidrieras por los monitores de televisiOn.

es el regreso del tribalismo ancestral, heredado genéticamente,

dicen, en el inconsciente colectivo. (36)
This tribe, a reminder of the subconscious need to belong, establishes its own religion in
which ﬁxed borders among the participants are diluted. The music and ecstasy percolate
through the dancers’ brains — trying to play their body chemistry -— creating a homology

between sonic texture and the chemically elevated cortex. They partake collectively in

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the ecstatic ﬂuid celebration yet can be read individually as each participant brings her
own personal history and experience and therefore embodies her own ﬁguration, in
Braidotti’s terms, of the nomadic subject. “Yo tarnbién participo en este rito comr’rn, y
una vez bendecida por el DJ a1 que va dirigida nuestra alabanza, le imploro de corazOn
que me frmda con el resto” (36). Cristina, a ﬁguration partaking in the neo-tribal rave
scene, admits that while it is a collective act signaling us to Maffesoli’s theory- a location
of a communion of believers - she still retains her individuality and moreover, the
elements both discursive and material are embodied on her self:
Siento que las luces de la pista son tangibles, y que la mr'rsica se traduce a
imagenes. Vuelve a ascender la mr'rsica en capas envolventes intentando
anularnos con su voluntad ensordecedora. Desde la barra vislumbro un
tejido irisado de brazos y piemas y camisetas brillantes, una masa humana
y multicolor de cabelleras, ondeando a1 ritrno de mil tambores atavicos.
Ramalazos de luces surgen de la nada, ﬂash, y desaparecen a1 segundo de
cegamos, negro, y otra luz cegadora vuelve a surgir coincidiendo con un
nuevo latido de nuestro corazén. Cuando tengo que cruzar 1a sala para ir
dejando limpias las mesas erizadas de vasos y botellas me siento un
nadador contra corriente. Alrededor de mi los cuerpos, comprimidos y
multiperforados, se empujan los unos a los otros, las personas ya no son
personas porque la identidad de cada uno se funde en el crisol de la masa,
y lo que siento alrededor es un magma en ebulliciOn, con pequeﬁas

burbujitas que de vez en cuando emergen a la superﬁcie. (39)

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The space of the dance ﬂoor is a decisive element of the grammar of Cristina’s identity.
This territory is distinctive because it contrasts the individual experience with that of the
masses, or identity opposing the abysm of anonymity. It is within this location that
Cristina articulates her notion of self, focusing not so much on the content nor the
rationality of the experience but rather the feeling imbued: she is in constant movement.
This new consciousness undercuts verbal concepts; she felt it with every cell of her body,
without the distortions of language intervening. The prevailing mentality of sensation
and sound is interwoven and deﬁned by the set and setting of the participants, which
itself is interwoven with the prevailing social mood of 1990s Madrid Spain. That is,
identity formation ceases to be rooted solely in the local; rather due to technological
advances and globalization, it becomes enmeshed in other practices:
Es facil localizar temporalmente e1 fenOmeno. En la transieién entre el
siglo XX y el XXI los grandes estados, las grandes ciudades y, en general,
las sociedades complejas se desarrollan sobre espacios muy arnplios, casi
mundiales, en los que resulta muy diﬁcil marcar fronteras y limites. Estas
mismas entidades no logran ya- recuérdese que estamos en la sociedad de
la informaciOn y del libre comercio-frenar lo que viene de fuera, lo que
obviamente, les lleva a confundir lo propio con 10 extraito. . ..Entonces
resulta ya mucho mas diﬁcil distinguir a los enemigos, a los oponentes, a
los auténticamente extranos, a los que pertenecen a1 espacio propio y a los
que provienen del espacio ajeno. (Costa 29)
In a society entrenched with globalized information and progressive consolidation of ﬁ'ee

commerce, no longer functions the traditional constitution of identity: space delineating

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social status. The weakening of conventional identity founded on the one’s own space
gives way to self-forrnation in alignment with the conditions called for in our twenty-ﬁrst
century: consumption, fashion, technology, and the spectacle. Pere-Oriol Costa in
T ribus urbanas afﬁrms a transformation in identity politics stating: “El panorama urbano
espaflol de este turbulento ﬁnal de siglo y de rrrilenio no diﬁere, en el fondo, de los demés
centros metropolitanos de nuestro planeta” (36). This is realized through the
bombardment of public announcements in their constant attempts to awaken us to achieve
our full potential. “La publicidad no cesa de dirigirse personalizadarnente a ese individuo
— un individuo que desea — mediante la modalidad del irnperativo seductor:
<<compra>>, <<usa>>, <<haz>>, etc.” (Costa 40) These public announcements
conjugated with the consumer, negotiate the subj ect-formation, such that each subject
feels owner and planner of her existence. Costa contends:

Pasear por las calles de una gran ciudad, con la mirada errante, si es
posible sin prisas, es una experiencia en la que se obtiene la impresién de
que miles de neones, carteles, pancartas y vallas publicitarias tutean a1
sujeto y captan su atencién en una celebracién constante de ese triunfo del
individuo. (40)

Hence mass media, through the creation of superﬁcially intimate ties (use of at address)
with the consumer, reveals to the subject multifarious options for the fashioning of
selﬂrood. So, while there are those who seek to edify their identity through the exaltation
of designer labels, such as Cristina’s older sister Ana, others, Cristina being the obvious
example, choose to adopt a distinct aspect, codiﬁed with anti-capitalist, anti-consumer

language. Costa associates this behavior with the term anomia stemming ﬁ'om a-només

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in Latin, meaning “ausencia de reglas, norrnas, y consecuentemente, inobservancia de las
leyes” (3 8) 5 7 . He further contends that this phenomena tends to surface in a society in
transformation whereby traditional values conﬂict with emerging ones, generating an
endemic frustration. He states:
...caducidad de los viejos valores e inexistencia (o fragilidad) de los
nuevos. En su acepcién mas evidente, todo esto signiﬁca que en un
contexto urbano como el actual, en el que se maniﬁesta una oferta plural
de bienes materiales y culturales, se genera facilmente irritaciOn y
frustraciOn entre quienes no tienen los medios -— no 3610 econOmicos sino
también (y, tal vez, sobre todo) simbélicos - para alcanzar dichos bienes.
La reacciOn puede ser entonces de tipo anémico. . .(3 8)
Thus, dissidents - those manifesting anomic qualities - toy with the margins and produce
a social discourse distinct of the dominant rationale, reﬂected in the individual narratives.
Cristina, walking out on the capitalist multinational, broke with the establishment, going
off into the bar; nevertheless, it must be noted that she is not outside of the masculine
economy. She not only made the physical but the emotional break with the reality that
she knew. Her experiences within the underground scene of Planeta X have reinforced
the break; no longer relying on tested narratives, vis-a-vis the rave culture, the neo-tribe
and by extension Cristina explore creative channels that new technology affords. This
particular location, Planeta X, constitutes a special time when normal rules are
suspended; an idealized, peak experience that allows space for utopian dreaming and acts

as a catalyst for events to come. Through adoption of a new lifestyle (Planeta X),

 

’7 In her article “’Altemative’ Music and the Oppositional Potential of Generation X Culture” Leslie
Haynsworth notes that alientation and anomic are deﬁning characterisitics of Generation X as this
particular culture locates itself outside of the mainstream.

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Cristina altered her vision of stable security; wealth and traditional status represented
linear authoritative control. Yet within the scene, the plethora of accoutrements acts as
rhythms that induce a different relationship between the self and body: one that is more
sensorial and sensual.
Visibility is a key component of identity construction in contemporary society.
The image or particular style of ‘mask’ is a fundamental feature of identity that affords
each individual visibility. Costa argues its instrumental ﬁmctionality stating:
Insistimos en la irnportancia de la dimensién del aspecto y de la
apariencia, bajo un punto de vista complementario: trans-parentarse, es
decir ver lo que aparece a través de una superﬁcie. La sociedad
contemporénea, mas que todas las que la han precedido, parece
Obsesionada por la idea de verlo y/o mostrarlo todo, de transforrnar el
mundo en algo literalrnente transparente. (50)
The image, constructed through the articulation of body dressing, represents a synergy
among feelings, clothes, signs, and senses. Fashion, furthermore, is the syntax of body
language that charges the body with meaning; its value remains not in the use of the
clothing but rather its communication. Patrizia Calefato contends in El sentido del vestir,
“...en el propio vestir segr'm la serialidad de la imagen de moda, subsiste siempre un gesto
arquetipico carnavalesco que consiste en travestir, en disfrazar, en “escribir” el cuerpo y
sobre el cuerpo para que éste se introduzca en la circulacidn “de las calles y del placer”,
para que el cuerpo sea ‘para los otros’ — y para si mismo- como si uno fuera otro” (10).
Dress, then, is a body ‘disguise’, codiﬁed with social meaning, lending weight to pictorial

representation of identity, albeit ﬂuid. From this symbolic language, what then emerges

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is a sense of who one is and who one is not. Fashion, a world affording a visual,
nonverbal vocabulary for the construction of truths, provides for a constant negotiation of
identity and its borders due to its intrinsic nature; every season and year is greeted with a
new, if not recycled, trend. Cristina’s fashion consumption further indicates the minding
and construction of her subjectivity. Her body dressing of choice oscillates between two
outﬁts, but both embody a style ‘desenfadado’. As a body is symbol of cultural location,
the dressed body is always situated within a particular context. In the bar, “he
prescindido de los pantalones de carnpana y las camisetas por encima del ombligo. . .”
(74), and on the street “Camiseta blanca, vaqueros nuevos, sin remiendos ni nada, botas
de cuero” (74). Both options effectively inﬂect the body with meaning, underlining her
sexuality, yet at the same time, her informal nature; in the same way she expressed
dissention against capitalist systems, the protagonist also achieves this through her
clothing. Furthermore, by way of sporting jeans or cargo pants, Cristina embodies a laid-
back yet slightly rebellious subjectivity that stands in contraposition to her body as text
within the multinational. The fashion that Cristina elects serves the frmction to attract the
male gaze, for instance, within the bar she wears a tanktop that reveals her stomach. Yet
it must be emphasized that while her body converts into a commodity, it is not a passive
object. Rather, Cristina actively produces it through routine and practice.

As a means of clothing, adorning or decorating the body, fashion operates at an
affectual as well as symbolic level. It aids in the construction and reconstruction of
individual subj ectivities while forging an affectual or experimental relationship between
various actors. Cristina’s choice of clothing does not simply symbolize rebellion, but it

has a serious impact on how she savors and relishes her lived-body and her body-in-use.

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Whether dressed in jeans or her bar outﬁt, she has a commanding presence. “Soy una
chica como cualquier otra, que no destacaria en un concurso de belleza. Y, sin embargo,
por la calle todos los hombres me dedican adj etivos mas o menos arnables, mas o menos
procaces. Quiza sea mas guapa de lo que creo yo” (73-74). This can also be noted within
the context of the bar; Cristina, as the bartender, works from behind the bar and is the
focal point of this venue. That is to say, as the chief distributor of libations, her body
converts to a commodity, but she still maintains power. While selling drinks, Cristina
places herself on the market, not explicitly for amorous purposes, but to bolster her
income. Her body-in-use, then, is located in this affective structure - a convergence of
music, lights, drugs, bodies and fashion- within the economy of give and exchange, and
articulates, reinforces, and reﬂects the social lived reality of this scene. One of the most
powerful examples of the use of her body as a material within this construct is the scene
in which her sister Rosa pays a visit to Planeta X. As the two siblings are embroiled in
the continual spat regarding Cristina’s job selection, a customer enters described as “un
tipo bajito y repeinado, que no debe de tener mas de treinta aﬁos. Lleva un polo rosa,
pantalones de pinzas y zapatos italianos. Apenas supera e1 metro setenta Un pijillo”
(49). As Cristina approaches him, he lets her know that he would like a whiskey, but not
just any; he questions “gCémo se llama el de aquella botella marrén que esta en lo alto
del estante?”(49). After Cristina explains to him the speciﬁc liquor he requested was not
a whiskey but actually a gin — a very expensive one- and, moreover, that it would be
difﬁcult for her to access the bottle as it was not within reaching distance, he forceﬁrlly
tells her that he is the customer, and as a worker, She is obligated to fulﬁll his request.

Only, within this economy, he was not simply asking for the drink, rather a peek “. . .el

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muy cabrén esta aprovechando la ocasién para mirarme e1 culo” (50) as her body was a
component of the bar assemblage. Interestingly, his request, which was being fulﬁlled by
Cristina, represented a point of contestation for her older sister Rosa, who promptly
informed the customer: “gTe importaria dejar de mirar e1 culo de mi novia con semej ante
descaro?” (50) Rosa enters the situation, albeit subversively, with a handful of motives:
to remove Cristina out of the realm of pure spectacle and to make her aware that she does
indeed work in a patriarchal institution”.

In the dimension of the bar, a zone of pleasure, commodities circulate and
meanings are appropriated, re-imaged, and re-tooled for consumer consumption. It is in
this location that Cristina articulates her identity through the dizzying symphony of
music, lights, drugs and fashion, which works to produce her body, a body that
communicates and may be understood through the grammar of signs. This language
connotes a speciﬁc ideology or set of cultural meanings that speak of one’s identity, in
Cristina’s case, an individual who works from the margins in a collectivity, distinct of
that of capitalism, to access and feel the emancipation otherwise denied to her in the
Space of the multinational. So, it is interesting to note how she appropriates this
discourse outside of Planeta X; that is, her autonomy is not exclusive to the rave scene,
although this particular ambience offers new possibilities for the invention of self.
Likewise, the commanding and exercising of her identity outside of this reahn gives
evidence to, in Braidotti’s term, the working through of experiences to one’s beneﬁt.

Cristina’s closest friends, Line and Gema, embody a similar ideology regarding

contemporary life in Spain. Her best friend Line, who suffers from an eating disorder,

 

’8 While Rosa does takecare of this situation, that is, stop the objectiﬁcation of Cristina by a bar patron,
does she not also further objectify her, calling more attention to Cristina through her perhaps possessive
claims that they are lesbian partners?

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proclaims as her holy trinity: “Los éxtasis. . ., e1 chocolate. . ..el sexo anal” (160). This
collectivity of women, through cultures of consumption, embodies dissidence; they rebel
against socially prescribed norms for the female subject and thereby create alternative
subjectivities. One particular occasion that exempliﬁes their questioning of tradition is in
the chapter “I de intolerancia”. This speciﬁc chapter treats the construction of alternative
female identity and the manner in which it is received by patriarchy. Cristina, in much
detail, describes a morning bus ride shared by herself and Line in which they were
returning home after a night of much partying and no sleep. She provides a vivid
illustration of their attire:
....a Line y a mi, monisimas, tal que salidas de un catalogo de Don
Algodén. Todo en nuestro aspecto (el modelito compuestisimo, el
maquillaje corrido, las carreras de mis medias...) delata que venimos de
una ﬁesta y que todavia no hemos dormido. (91)
From the outset, these women symbolically represent the erosion of traditional values as
their highly sexual yet disordered appearance suggests. Cristina is wearing “un traje
negro cefiido que revela con el mayor descaro las curvas vertiginosas de mis cincuenta y
ocho kilos...” (91), an outﬁt that offers her the means of gratifying desires and pursuing
pleasure; nonetheless, her body resembles that of an adolescent: “Me estoy quedando en
los huesos. Parezco recién salida de Dachau” (37). Thus, her look alludes to the
complex balance between social control and self-gratiﬁcation. Her body as an object
constructed thorough consumerism is an important element in feminine culture that is a
commodity - transformed and sold. The paradox between her ‘on the move’ look and

size takes on new dimension with the way she embodies this combination on the bus. For

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example, the way she sits: “me siento con la planta de un toro de la ganaderia de Pablo
Romero: poderio y bravura cincelados en negro” (91-92) reﬂects the power she receives
(perceived or real) from her body dressing. Her friend, Line, contrasts sharply with
Cristina due to her angelica], childlike look: “. . .cuarenta y tres kilos, carniseta rosa talla
doce aﬁos con estarnpado de la Bola del Dragén, ﬂequillo, dos coletitas sujetandole los
cabellos rubios y unos enormes ojos azul cielo que la conﬁeren un aire de perpetuo
asombro” (92). Upon pure consideration of image, Line’s look could be cast as passive;
nevertheless, her body refuses effacement, asserting its independence from the clothes
that cover it. On the bus, these two friends begin a critical conversation about men,
focusing on their sexual relationships. As the remaining passengers were men, including
the bus driver, they listened attently to the women’s conversation about their sexual
escapades. Cristina begins the conversation inquiring about Line’s night, to which she
responds “No mucho. HE ESTADO FOLLANDO” (93), each word resounding louder.
As if this were not enough to cause discomfort for this conventional crowd, she retells
with minute detail her experience: “No gran cosa, hija. iMenudo coiiaazo de tio. . .! Y
encima nos 10 hemos hecho en la cama de sus padres, con el cruciﬁjo en la pared y la foto
de su mama en la mesilla. Bueno, bueno. . . jme daba un maaal rollo! Todo el rato con la
impresién de que la foca esa me miraba con cara de mosqueo” (95). Not only do these
two women discuss their evening, but they also admit that they were quite disappointed
in the performance of their partners. The conversation elaborates further on past sexual
experiences and also sexually transmitted diseases, which Line says were pure torture
because in her own words: “soy una adicta al sexo. No pasa una semana Sin que lo

intente otra vez” (98). Their discourse collides with the prevailing tradition that

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prescribes and enforces gendered identities. Yet, these two continue to question
conventional roles as manifest in sexual experiences; Line elaborates: “Ellos, los muy
cabrones, si que lo tienen facil, porque al ﬁnal no importa que la cosa les salga mejor 0
poor, el caso es que siempre se corren, mientras que nosotras. . .es como jugar a la loteria”
(98). The discourse demonstrates their major preoccupation with the formulation of the
fulﬁllment of their needs and desires deﬁned in their own terms, which sharply contrasts
with society’s constrained conception of female pleasure. This is poignantly displayed
through the men’s reactions toward their personal conversation. To begin with, the bus
driver nearly avoided two accidents due to his intense focus on their conversation, to
which he could only offer: “Mira, guapa. La culpa es tuya por no bajar el volumen. (,0
to has creido que los demas estamos aqui para escuchar vuestras vulgaridades? (99). Or
other trite responses from workers: “A estas me las llevaba yo a la obra y se les iban a
quitar las ganas de cachondeo. . .Mira, rubita [Line]. Tengo una hij a que debe de tener tu
edad, y te aseguro que si alguna vez 1a oigo hablar como tr'r, le doy cuatro hostias y le
lavo la boca con jab6n” (100). Thus, in the attempt to have a personal conversation in
which they relate their sexual experiences and frustrations in contemporary society, these
women are met with resistance and the threat of punishment. These responses underline
the prevalence in contemporary society of containment of women in the binary
opposition of Eve, the temptress, or Mary, the holy mother of God. The women, though,
utilize this situation to their advantage; instead of allowing their comments to produce
negative effects such as feeling ashamed or embarrassed or silencing themselves, they
speak out against the unjust stereotypes hurled at women. Line responds to the men

ﬁrmly and succinctly all the while maintaining intense eye contact: “No hagas caso a

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estos RE-PRI-MI-DOS. Mejor nos baj amos. Preﬁero seguir andando que quedarrne en
este autobr’rs lleno de MA-CHIS-TAS” (100). Line and Cristina repossess bodily space
through their denunciation of men’s attitudes and exiting the bus. As Braidotti contends:
The body as a site of interaction of material and symbolic forces is the
threshold of subjectivity; it is not a biological notion, but marks, rather the
non-coincidence of the subject with his/her consciousness and the non-
coincidence of anatomy with sexuality. (282)
In this view, essentialism no longer clothes the body as it is now positioned between the
sign and biology. The women, through the appropriation of the body, explore multiple
and non-binary experiences through lived practice. Armed against the notion that
Woman is one, Cristina and Line create a new set of possibilities for the embodiment of
the female subject. In fact, their heterogenous representation is evidence of the
multiplicity of female subjectivities, as T. de Lauretis afﬁrms:
What is emerging in feminist writings is. . .the concept of a multiple,
shifting, and often self-contradictory identity, a subject that is not divided
in, but rather at odds with language; an identity made up of heterogeneous
and heteronomous representation of gender, race and class, and often
indeed across languages and cultures; an identity that one decides to
reclaim ﬁom a history of multiple assimilations, and that one insists on as
a strategy. (9)
Through resistance and rejection of the hegemonic model, Etxebarria’s writing redeﬁnes

the concept of the knowing subject, which suggests support for the notion that a new

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image of both knowledge and subjectivity is not necessary, rather essential to the

regeneration of the concept of woman.

Rosa Gaena: Techno-colonization, the Cyborg, and Emotive Harmony
Rosa, the middle child of the Gaena sisters, is a highly successful single thirty
year-old director of ﬁnance for a large multinational company. AS third wave feminists
seek to resist the essentialism of woman, opting to deﬁne women through a multiplicity
of ﬁgurations, the characters of Cristina and Rosa shed light on their statement vis-a-vis
their distinct ideologies on what it means to be a woman in Spain in the last decade of the
twentieth century. The character of Rosa — mediated by various discourses - serves to
highlight the shortcomings of the second wave of feminism; the modus operandi of that
particular generation of feminists was to achieve equality among the sexes through the
assimilation of women into the patriarchal structure. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the
confessions of Rosa as well as the discourse of Cristina, women while legal equals under
the Spanish Constitution of 197 8, were subjected to different standards and continued to
suffer ill treatment in the workplace. Rosa recites, as if by memory, the unwritten code of
comportment for women in the arena of the ofﬁce.
Si desea tener éxito como mujer de negocios pOngase de pie con tanta
frecuencia como sus colegas masculinos y en las rrrismas situaciones que
éstos. No perrnanezca sentada cuando alguien entre en su despacho 0 se
rer’ma con usted ante su mesa. No importa lo que digan los manuales de

urbanidad: Si quiere usted igualdad de oportunidades e igualdad de trato,

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debe ponerse en pie como un hombre, literal y ﬁgurativarnente hablando.
(21 5)
Peppered with the rhetoric of equality, Rosa’s discourse promotes masculine politics
whereby the woman must adhere to norms of the male economy and sacriﬁce her internal
liberty. Equality in this paradigm supposes a deﬁnitive triumph of the patriarchal
structure. SendOn de LeOn argues the ineffective nature of these strategies citing the
work of Simone de Beauvoir.
Siendo consecuentes con lo que plantea Beauvoir, la propuesta de la
igualdad y emancipacién desde semej antes presupuestos solo puede
lograrse negando la diferencia sexual femenina en beneﬁcio de un <sujeto
universal y neutro>> que, légicamente, seria masculino, por mas que
incluyera tanto a hombres como a mujeres en la etapa gloriosa de la
igualdad. (21)
This theorist of sexual difference underlines the absurdity of locating emancipation of the
female subject within the dominant model; equality realized under this paradigm - one of
colonization - only annihiliates the possibility of autonomy and serves to perpetuate
fundamental inequality. This is further evidenced in Rosa’s interior monologue:
“Compdrtese como un hombre. Controle sus sentimientos. No llore en pr'rblico. Que sus
gestos siempre sean adecuados y aceptables con arreglo a la situaciOn concreta.
Sincronice las palabras con las acciones” (216). The list of commands she ﬂips through
like a rolodex ﬁle seem much more appropriate for a military person as opposed to a
woman in business, yet she justiﬁes her rhetoric stating: “Recuerde que, por lo general,

cuando las muj eres se encuentran a1 frente de la direccién siempre son blanco de criticas

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que nada tienen que ver con su capacidad profesional” (216). As she uncovers, biology is
the determining factor for women in the workplace, not their efforts. While the feminine
is explicity located at the heart of the commodity culture, a traditionally masculine script
of ambition and achievement is re-constructed through the ﬁgure of Rosa. A quandary
for Rosa is her intense desire to succeed in a masculine economy at the expense of utter
negation of her emotions and nature. Following this line of thought, Rosa declares that to
be successful in this: “mundo en que solo tienen cabida los triunfadores” (219) is to join
them and “sacriﬁcar casi todo lo demas” (219).

As opposed to her younger sister Cristina, who walked solemnly out of the
capitalist economy after having intentionally crashed the hard drive, Rosa consumes and
is consumed by the world of capitalism and technology”. In the late twentieth century,
advances in scientiﬁc culture and technology have made possible the dissolution of the
neatly bound human. Shedding light on this is Rosa as she represents a hybrid identity,
part machine and part human; in the words of Donna Haraway she is a “cyborg” or a mix
of “machine and organism” (2), a ﬁguration which illustrates the contemporary social
reality of our Western world. The term cyborg was initially coinced by Manfred Clynes
and Nathan Kline at the beginning of the sixties to describe man-machine systems.
However, since then, the concept of the cyborg has been theorized in a manner to
consider the relationship among human beings and technology, as cyborg technologies
ambiguously reconﬁgure human subjectivity. Of speciﬁc concern to the cyborg is its
constituency; unlike the patriarchal hegemony, the cyborg is a crafted fabrication. It

represents the melding of the machine and the mind, expansion of consciousness, and

 

’9 While Cristina did walk out of the multinational, she did interchange one patriarchal structure for
another, Planeta X. She is not really outside of the system, rather operates within it to her advantage, vis-a-
vis her job at the bar.

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intelligence. The cyborg fuses the organic and the hi-tech, and as such is a boundary
breaker.

However, this theory engenders conﬂicts. According to Haraway, the cyborg
does not submit to the symbolic law, as the role of the father is inessential: “The cyborg
does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the
oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of
mud and cannot dream of returning to dust” (3). In her line of inquiry the cyborg, a
potentially subversive ﬁguration, possesses no historical memory nor is grounded in the
dominant economy. Negating social and historical background results problematic; in
‘erasing’ history, one denies differences and experiences among marginal groups.
Furthermore, the theory supposes that body and mind convert to a tabla rasa to be
developed through the melding of ﬂesh and circuits, again denying voice to individual
experience as well as brushing over historical accountability.

Encoded on Rosa’s body - rationality, order, and logic - manifest and concurrently
demonstrate the conﬂation and resulting hybridization of organism and machine. Rosa
deﬁnes herself: “idéntica a mi ordenador, que dispone de una bateria de emergencia que
se conecta automaticamente en caso de un fallo en la corriente eléctrica. Diseﬁada para
durar. Prograrnada para seguir adelante” (220). As a cross between machine and
organism, Rosa is coded in such a way to produce confusion among boundaries of female
identity. What is rrrissing in this new identity — to a certain degree - are the insipid forms
of oppression that historically have been naturalized by the libidinal male economy.

Palabras que me deﬁnen. Equilibrio tecnolOgico. Correo electrénico.

Memoria Ram. Balances. Presupuestos. Inforrnes por triplicado. Curvas

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de carnpana. Capital riesgo. Minimo amortizable. Comité de direccién.
Plan de crecimiento. Inyeccién de capital. VersiOn alfa. F ase beta.
Proyectos. Equipos. Multimedia. Liderazgo. (163)
The terms she employs to describe herself coincide with the notion of the melding of
machine and ﬂesh: email, RAM, capital risk, explansion plans, and leader. This thirty-
year old woman has essentially come of age in an increasingly technological and
materialistic bureaucratic society, where discourses collide and communities are
fragmented. Consequently, her subject is the product of her upbringing and experiences.
Amidst sensations of alienation and fragmentation, the cerebral Rosa organizes her life
both personally and professionally according to high technology principles that are
encoded in her subjectivity. Her memory mimics technological information systems as
she emphasizes the transition from the old hierarchical economy to the new network of
information systems. “Ha llegado un punto en que mi memoria esta duplicada, y la
memoria exteriorizada en archivos y bases de datos supera a la almacenada en mi cerebro
biolégico”. Her discourse problematizes and subverts the integrity of binary oppositions
steeped in the masculine ideology.
Una gran cantidad de informacidn esta guardada en mi computadora. Para
acceder a ella hace falta teclear una clave de acceso que solo yo conozco.
Otra parte, menos conﬁdencial, se archiva en disquettes, guardados bajo
llave. Los disquettes y la memoria RAM contienen cifras y datos precisos,
archivados por orden alfabético en carpetas y subarchivos facihnente
localizables. Esta informacién procesada en digitos binarios conforma mi

identidad laboral, la que me identiﬁca frente a1 mundo. (125)

154

Analyzing the connections between Rosa’s subjectivity and technology leads to an
exploration of identity beyond mere hardware. With the inﬂux of technologies in the
information age, signiﬁcant alterations in patterns of human activity are occurring; the
subject addressed by these technologies is not the familiar modern subject, centered,
coherent, stable, on whose actions, initiated in individual consciousness, society is based;
instead, it is unstable, multiple, and fragmented. The body is principally re-conﬁgured
through communications technology and biotechnologies, consequently: “these tools
combine and enforce new social relations for women world-wide” (Haraway 14). The
articulation of this world is not bound by the symbolic language of the patriarchal
hegemony as it creates its own common parlance: code. This notion is of particular
interest to the theorist Donna Haraway because as this sector is not tightly bound by the
masculine libidinal economy, it represents a common point of potential resistance for
women against the heterosexual dynamic: “the translation of the world into a problem of
coding, a search for a common language in which all resistance to instrumental control
disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disassembly, reassembly,
investment, and exchange” (14). Communication technologies have fundamentally
obscured the boundary between the machine and organism. This occurs by way of the
rarity of the mind and body with the tool. Consequently, social relations are
reconﬁgured. As Rosa declares: “. . .la vida se me va entre m'rmeros y cuentas,
documentos intemos y disquettes de ordenador, y resulta diﬁcil recordar que mi cerebro
no esta hecho de chips, que soy humana. Aunque cada dia se me note menos” (132).
The technological era has indoctrinated society with a new measure and source of power,

one that has been feminized“). This power source may have the potential to rearrange the

 

6° To be feminized means to be subject to vulnearability, to be able to be “disassembled, reassembled,

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politics of gender, as ﬁxed identities are destabilized and women are offered an escape
from their naturalized essence, an escape from Man. Within the cyborg economy, the
power of production and reproduction take on an entirely different form. Whereas the
heterosexual economy naturalizes production and reproduction within the context of
binary oppositions, with respect to the cyborg these are forged through the coalescence of
ﬂesh and machine. Within communications technology, though, the subject wielding the
power is ambiguous: “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between
human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines that resolve
into coding practices” (Haraway 26). Due to the ambiguity of the cyborg hybrid, there
does not exist the notion of One and Other.

On an affectual level, Rosa embodies characteristics intrinsic of the intensiﬁed
machine-body relations, which emerge through her experiences of her body-in-use. For
instance, Cristina described Rosa’s gait as she leaves Planeta X drawing attention to the
control and near militaristic discipline exerted by her legs as they cross the dance ﬂoor in
a few strides: “Cruza la pista en tres zancadas, marcial, solemne y estilosa” (51). Her
body language mirrors the ideology of the culture of consumption to which she belongs.
From the microscopic level — her footstep — to the macroscopic — her journey out of the
bar, one notes the reproduction of the tenets of communications technology. Rosa’s exit
reﬂected purposeﬁrlness, as if it were a mission. Cristina comments, “la veo cruzar la
pista con la velocidad constante de una ﬂecha disparada a un obj etivo claro” (51)

These principles of logic, rationalism, militaristic discipline, and minimalism
manifest on multiple levels in the life of Rosa Gaena. As Rosa relates her personal

narrative, we learn that she has achieved great success in her career, which has enabled

 

exploited as a reserve labour force” (Haraway 16).

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her to enter into the realm of material consumption, taking special interest in luxury
goods. Unlike Cristina who prefers apparel ‘desenfadado’, Rosa consumes top of the line
Spanish and foreign designer labels such as Philip Stark, Loewe, Armani, and Angel
Schelesser. Her selection in name brands likewise parallels her ideology, as the
production of these designers reﬂects a modern elegance through prudence and
functionality. Schelesser’s collection, in particular, illustrates the triumph of minimalism
as seen in his “ropa bien cortada, sobria y descomplicada” (F i gueras 140); the other
Spanish label, Loewe, is also of high distinction. This label, founded in Madrid in the
nineteenth century, caters to the select few - those with resources to consume this line-
who appreciate sober, clean lines with ever so slight strokes of trendy innovation.
Joseﬁna Figuera, author Of Moda espariola: una historia de sueﬁos y realidades
categorizes the work of this label as: “una moda de altura en la que domina siempre la
piel pero que da tarnbién cabida a toda clase de tejidos y lineas que alteman su clasicismo
habitual con toques de vanguardia” (25). Rosa’s choice of consumption in fashion
mirrors the dynamics that manifest within her professional environment: sober, lineal,
and functional. The following description in which Rosa elaborates upon her work attire
illustrates her clean, square thinking which is inscribed on her body.

Me gustan los trajes sastre, tarnbién, porque resultan practicos.

Me basta con carnbiar a diario de camisa y accesorios y puedo usar el

mismo traje tres dias seguidos. Eso si, mis trajes son de la mejor calidad:

Loewe, Armani y Angel Schelesser. Tengo tres: gris, azul marino y

negro. Colores sobrios para una imagen sobria. (55)

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Three pantsuits, somber in color and of very high quality, take truns dressing and infusing
Rosa’s body with their characteristics. According to Paul Sweetrnan in his article “Shop
Window Dummies? Fashion, the Body, and Emergent Socialities”, “Bodies and selves
are made and remade in part through the ways in which they are adorned, and this is a
process that involves ‘carnal knowing’ as well as ‘cognitive apprehension’” (67). In light
of Rosa’s fashion consumption, the arena(s) in which she participates and their norms
must be taken into consideration. Rosa is located in the space of the multinational, where
she occupies a position of distinction. Despite the supposed equality of the sexes, she
knows and understands the unwritten politics as they manifest in nearly every life
decision. She cites John T. Molloy’s Dress for Success which treats the appearance a
woman should project in the business world: “<<Las muj eres que llevan ropa discreta
tienen un 150% mas de probabilidades de sentirse tratadas como ej ecutivas, y un 30%
menos de probabilidades de que los hombres cuestionen su autoridad>>” (5 5). Whereas
a man’s authority is implied, it is emphasized that a woman must earn hers not through
her intellectual capacity but through the type of clothing She chooses. Effectively, the
technological discourse of the capitalist economy has colonized Rosa’s bodily text not
only symbolically, but it also affects how she experiences the use of her body.

Rosa occupies, and maneuvers among, a predominantly masculine space, and as
such the many facets of this territory form the architecture of Rosa’s self. Through a very
detailed description of her closet, we witness the amount of control, logic and linearity
invested in her personal space. As a member of this collectivity - the community of the
multinational - she reﬂects its extreme adherence to order and rigidity, hanging each

object in its place. Indeed, there manifests a relationship between Rosa’s closet and the

158

masculine order. Similar to the ideology of the hegemonic paradigm, Rosa superimposes
linearity and tyrrany in the arrangement of her vestuary. Furthermore, this action reﬂects
the binary hierarchical dualisms: rational/irrational, logical/illogical,
linearity/nonlinearity. This aformentioned instance exempliﬁes how she assumes and
inscribes onto her body and her intimate space — where one is free to be whoever - the
tenets of capitalism and technology.
El annario en el que alrnaceno mi ropa de trabajo exhibe un orden
meticuloso. Los zapatos, alineados por parej as. Los trajes, cada uno en su
percha correspondiente, en el lazo izquierdo. Las camisas, bien
planchadas, en el derecho. De plancharlos se ocupa la asistenta, por
supuesto, porque yo no puedo desperdiciar mi tiempo planchando. (55)
This location evidences a particular cleanness through its absence of qualities, the
absence of stains; the closet is suffused with what Daniel Harris terms “machine envy”
(150), or “the desire become our appliances” evidenced through the incorporation of
technological principles onto Rosa’s body and her space. Interestingly, in a separate
closet, Rosa houses the rest of her wardrobe; shufﬂed away in a hodge-podge order are
the clothing articles that do not correspond with her metabolic consumption of
technology, order, and logic. In this other space, we witness disorder and clothes that are
representative of a different culture of consumption, and thus neo-tribe. She mentions

jeans, an article of clothing that would be utterly unsuitable for her high-ranking position,

159

and other playful articles of clothing or jewelry that no longer correlate with her daily
existence“.
En el armario contiguo, el destinado a1 resto de mi ropa, reina
el caos. De las perchas cuelgan pantalones vaqueros, camisas estarnpadas,
traj es de noche y vestidos de verano mezclados en un batiburrillo de
formas y colores. En uno de los cajones se acumulan un remolino de
jerseys de lana. En el siguiente, la ropa interior negra, las bragas, los
bodies, 105 ligueros y las medias. Y en el r'rltimo, una masa inforrne de
diferentes prendas. Gorros impermeables y sombreros de ﬁesta, camisas
hippies y camisetas psicodélicas, cinturones dorados y bufandas. (56)
In examining the ideas, objects, and memories that Rosa consumes, it is interesting to
mention what she excludes: frivolity, undeﬁned boundaries, excess emotion, and sexual
encounters. Through hiding every trace of femininity, Rosa projects a hyper-masculine
look - an identity with neatly deﬁned borders - perhaps because it allows her to feel that
choices are more clearly deﬁned. In negating her femininity, Rosa traverses a path that
does not permit deviations; her choice is work, of course made easier through renouncing
her feminine nature and absorbing masculine tenets.
The techno-colonization of Rosa occurs at the level of her body language, the
organization of her personal space, as well as how it is reﬂected through her
consciousness of her sexuality. Unlike Cristina, who consumes and is consumed by sex,

Rosa rejects this part of her female self, shedding more light on the unmitigatedly macho

aesthetic of the techno-colonized multinacional. Through her participation in the

 

6‘ Rosa feels that jeans are inappropriate for someone in her position. It is ironic to note, though, that she is
quite jealous of her sister Cristina due to how good her body — in particular her derriere - looks in a pair of
jeans. (42)

160

communication arena, Rosa must learn to embody the dominant language and values of
that arena: self-control, determination, cool, emotional discipline, and mastery. Her
body speaks symbolically of this necessity through her pursuit of these virtues with
single-minded, unswerving dedication. During a visit to Planeta X, Cristina and Rosa
become embroiled in a conversation about the many negative qualities of Cristina’s ex-
boyﬁiend Iain, one of which, was his over-exhuberant ﬂattery towards Line, praising her
skeletal appearance and weight loss efforts. Cristina quickly defends Iain and Line
claiming that while her friend may be quite thin, she does not ﬁt the typical case study of
an anorexic “el caso es que tampoco, por lo visto, muestra el cuadro mental tipico de una
anoréxica, porque segr'm e1 psiquiatra las anoréxicas suelen ser personas muy
perfeccionistas e introvertidas, que renuncian a1 sexo” (45), as Line professes that aside
from chocolate, sex is the best. Cristina buffers and redirects Rosa’s attacks — basing her
argument on the lack of universal truth-calling her older sister an anorexic. The
medical terminology of anorexia refers to a person who refuses to eat, and uses this as a
control mechanism. In this vein, Cristina calls Rosa an anorexic for her lack of sexual
appetite as well as the neglect she demonstrates towards her femininity:
En primer lugar, que sepas que desde que ha aparecido la historia de las
top models y el culto a1 cuerpo parece que ya hay anoréxicas de todo tipo.
En segundo lugar, si estas intentando meterte con mi amiga, te recuerdo
que si solo hubiera que medir las cosas por ese rasero, entonces la
anoréxica serias tr'r, que eres la que ha renunciado a1 sexo. (45)
Offended by her sister’s re-appropriation of the word anorexic, Rosa justiﬁes her lack of

sexual activity through her independence, the same independence that forces her to deny

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herself an intrinsic part of her female self, her sexuality. Yet, she feels she must keep
under tight control the sexual economy because within the techno-colonized space of the
multinational, bodies are erased. “Yo misma deberia ser vicepresidente. Estoy mejor
preparada, con mucho, pero con mucho, que el im’rtil que tiene el puesto. Pero soy mujer,
asi que no me ascienden” (46). Her discourse reveals the shortcomings of the second
wave of feminism; in attempting to assimilate to the masculine model, women submit to
a series of violations that make her intelligible in a normative regime that does not
represent her (Butler 84).

Yet Rosa’s bodily text is layered in contradictions and ambiguities. A product or
child of the information circuit, Rosa illustrates the displacement of the hierarchical
dualisms of naturalized identities. Like her sisters, she was colonized by the patriarchy;
however, her experiences both inside and outside of the multinational present her with the
possibility of re-imagining herself. Returning home after intensely long work days, Rosa
only desires to relax yet is disturbed on numerous occasion by mysterious phone calls in
which the caller plays Henry Purcell’s La hora fatal‘” . This baroque composition inﬁrsed

with affections of real life re-locates Rosa emotionally and spiritually to her childhood.

 

62 Henry Purcell (1658-1695) was an English composer who wrote and performed a wide variety of musical
scores, ranging from sacred music to secular and opera. The piece “The Fatal Hour Comes on Apace” is a
baroque work saturated with emotion and affectation that employs the metaphor of death for a painful
separation, perhaps between lovers. The following are the lyrics of the piece.

The fatal hour comes on apace,

Which I had rather die than see,

For when fear calls you from this place,

You go to certain misery.

The thought does stab me to the heart,

And gives me pangs no word can speak,

It wracks me in each vital part,

Sure when you go, my heart will break.

Since 1 for you so much endure,

May I not hope you will believe,

‘Tis you alone these wounds can cure,

Which are the fountains of my grief.

162

Recalling the piece, which deals with the painful separation of loved ones, is an intergral
process in conterrnemory; it permits Rosa emotional vulnerability to ﬂesh through her
past experiences that have informed her selﬂrood. Decades ago Rosa was capable of
singing this composition without missing a single note, as she was considered a musical
prodigy. However, since her father abandoned the three sisters and their mother nearly
twenty years ago, she has since blocked these lyrics from her memory. “No puedo
explicar exactamente qué relaciOn conecto las dos decisiones; la de mi padre de dej arnos
a nosotras y la mia de dejar e1 canto, pero sé que tuvieron que ver entre Si. Si 61 no se
hubiera ido, yo habria seguido cantando” (58). Singing, like writing, gives Rosa the
power to signify, something that she had no desire to do after losing her father. Yet
through her narrative Rosa arrives at a deeper understanding of her passion — singing -
and the power it represents. Instead of searching to reclaim her lost innocence —
intimately connected with her father’s abandonment - Rosa begins to envision an
interconnection among singing and the power to survive. The ﬂeshing through of the
memory permits Rosa to elevate her awareness of her selfhood and ultimately these
shifts, resulting in a feminist nomadic subject, allow her to situate herself in a liberated
state of passion. She relates:
Y es que me hizo [la cancibn] recordar que hubo un momento en que yo
era capaz de sentir pasi6n por las cosas, en que fui capaz de aprenderrne
nota a nota una cancién que ninguna alumna de mi edad se habria atrevido
a solfear y mucho menos a cantar. Que hubo un tiempo en que luchaba
por lo que de verdad queria. Que hubo un tiempo en que lloraba

escuchando a Purcell. (265)

163

The mysterious phone calls work at the re-textualization of Rosa’s cyborg body vis-a-vis
the inﬁrsion of emotion, something she has denied herself for years. The combination of
Purcell’s emotive musicality and her techno-colonization situates Rosa on the border
between human and machine. As Donna Haraway argues: “Cyborg politics is the
struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one
code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism” (25).
Hence, Rosa has released herself from the constraint of an “original dream of a common
language or original symbiosis” (25), which frees her to further liberate herself from the
notion of a unilateral identity. And, this situates Rosa within the reahn of potential
whereby she may acknowledge and understand herself beyond binary oppositions, as an
intense multiplicity. Woman is not essence. Pondering and ﬂeshing through experiences,
woman has the potential to construct an active female subjectivity, which runs counter to
the hegemonic economy. “Stripped of identity, the bastard race teaches about the power
of the margins and the importance of a mother like Malinche. Women of colour have
transformed her from evil mother of masculirrist fear into the originally literate mother
who teaches survival” (26). Situated on the boundaries, Rosa is machine and she is
human; this hybrid identity collides with the neat categories popularized and naturalized
throughout Western history of female subjectivity, as Haraway professes “. . .female
embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to
mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions” (29). Liberated from a unitary,
conventional subjectivity, Rosa as cyborg exhibits a ﬂuid identity of neither one, nor the
other. The multiplicity she embodies challenges and subverts the patriarchal ideology

and furthennore, suggests an alternative to the totalizing paradigm of heterosexuality.

164

An element that has mediated and worked Rosa’s bodily text is her gratuitous use
of Prozac. In Cristina’s words, her sister lives “colgada” on this chemical. Rosa herself
begins to question the type of stability her dependence on this drug offers her.

LES esa pastillita blanca y verde que me tomo cada maﬂana la que me
ayuda a no llorar? gEsa pastillita que el médico me receté, ese
concentrado milagroso de ﬂuoxicetina, es la que hace que las
preocupaciones me resbalen como el agua sobre una sartén engrasada?
LES la paz 0 el prozack? No 10 sé. (216)
Prozac, the trendy anti-depressent, actively works on the body — the brain -— to increase
the levels of neurotransmitters called seratonin. The consumption of Prozac results in the
increase of mental activity, the reduction of anxiety and fatigue, as well as the augment of
the attention span. This particular chemical enhancement is closely associated with the
capitalist world, as its effects supposedly increase the overall productivity level of the
individual. While its primary effects are quite attractive, its secondary effects have not
been as widely commented, such as the reduction of libido and appetite and the creation
of, at the least, a psychological addiction. Prozac mediated, and to a certain point
created, subjectivity for Rosa compliant with the dominant economy’s dictates.
According to a statistic taken from Lucia Etxebarria’s personal website, “Las muj eres son
el sexo drogado. E1 75% de las consumidores de drogas psicotrOpicas legales (sedantes,
tranquilizantes, antidepresivos y reductores del apetito) son mujeres”
(http://teleline.terra.es/personal/luciaebr/drogashtm). This statistic suggests the over-
medicalization of women, yet for what purpose? In the age of information, a world

suffused with technology, the hierarchies of universal truth are under scrutiny and their

165

validity is being questioned. Prozac has been utilized to try to re-locate emotionally and
psychologically the patient, so that she may ﬁt neatly within society’s deﬁned limits.
However, Rosa renounces Prozac; hooked to the chemical balancer, she meandered
through life and its experiences anesthetized. After contemplation, which arose in part
from the mysterious phone calls playing Purcell’s La hora fatal, Rosa decides to quit
cold-turkey the anti-depressant, despite medical warnings against this sudden method yet
suffers no ill effects. One night, after discontinuing the medicalization, Rosa notices the
changes that her body, mind, and self experience.
...busqué entre mis discos viejos aquella cancién de Purcell, cantada por
James Bowan, descolgué el teléfono, me senté tranquilamente en el sillén
y me puse a escuchar la misma cancién, una y otra vez, recordando en
cada nueva escucha las notas una por una, las palabras, los acordes, los
arpeggios. . .Cada nota golpeaba como un puﬁo en mi interior y esos
golpes transmitian tal calor a mi corazOn que éste explotaba y se
disgregaba en fragrnentos dispersos. La mr'rsica bullia dentro de mi,
galopaba por mis venas, contenia el mundo, y dentro del mundo a mi
misma, a mi verdadero yo que habia permanecido dormido alli dentro de
tantos aﬂos y acababa de despertar furioso, emborrachado de entusiasmo.
(265-266)
Flushing the ﬂouxicetin out of her system regenerates an integral part of herself that she
had denied for much time: the ability to feel, whether it be pain, sorrow, or joy. A song
that she had forgotten for so long textualizes her body with striking traits of exuberance,

ecstasy, and irregularity. Her decision to live life to the fullest — her quest for survival as

166

opposed to one of salvation - can be read as a rejection of dominant ideology and an
exploration into the profimdity of her inner self which leads to the trusting in her own
intuitions. Her decision to free herself is a step on her journey toward the feminist

subjectivity posited by the scholars Haraway and Braidotti.

Ana Gaena: Consumption and Embodiment of the Angel del hogar

Ana, the oldest of the Gaena sisters, is a thirty-four year-old mother and
housewife who maintains an identity completely distinct of her other two siblings. As the
Gaena sisters were abandoned by their father at an early age, and relegated to the care of
their ineffective, bitter mother, the oldest sister, Ana, from a young age, was charged with
the care of her two sisters as well as the domestic duties in the household. As her sister
Rosa comments “. . .esa obsesién que Ana tenia con el orden y la limpieza nos ahorraba a
las demas tener que preocuparnos de limpiar e1 polvo, hacer las camas o planchar la ropa.
Teniamos criada gratis” (67). The narrative of Ana takes great pleasure in conspicuous
consumption, as she is in a ﬁnancial position - married to a wealthy successful man- to
afford it. The assessment of clothing, interior design and commodity consumption in her
monologue frequently borrows from the language of lifestyle women’s magazines. That
is, there is a direct crossover between her narrative and ﬁction journalism.

Ana’s discourse Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas revolves around themes
impregnanted with consumption such as design, style, and fashion. As she derives this
information from pop culture media, she consistently assesses situations in terms of

prescribed norms taken from magazine blurbs and shopping habits:

167

Para arreglar una abolladura sobre la madera hay que aplicar un trapo
blanco hr'rmedo, procurando que empape la madera. Acto seguido hay que
colocar otro trapo grueso, también humedecido, y aplicar la plancha de
vapor caliente, porque la accién del calor dilatara las ﬁbras y las nivelara
(84)
Her life is molded by her consumption of suitable goods, and her love for her husband
and child are expressed through the care with which she chooses ﬁrrnishings for their
home. Ana articulates her anxieties about her marriage and child and expresses her
disdain for her life, entirely in terms of commodities and a stratiﬁcation of brand names:
Las cortinas de Gastén y Daniela estén hechas una pena, sobre todo por
los bordes. Eso es porque el nii’io se dedica a colgarse de ellas con las
manos grasientas. Tengo que decirle a la asistenta que se encargue de
lavarlas. Gracias a Dios, como son de hilo se pueden lavar en lavadora y
después no hace falta plancharlas. Se centrifugan y se cuelgan. El propio
peso hace que queden impecables. (85)
Pierre Bourdieau afﬁrms that material goods are by no means simply a matter of style,
rather they assert class difference and superiority. Ana herself acknowledges that her
own lifestyle is distinct from the women who wear “una especie de imitacién de Chanel
de baratillo con botones dorados con el que esta mujer debe de creer que va muy elegante
y que se parece a la Consuelo Berlanga” (113). Her profound knowledge of brand names
distinguishes her own taste from that of the ordinary consumer, sporting a couch from
“Roche Bobois” (76), crystal fabricated by “Vilches” (76), place settings designed by

“Agata Ruiz de la Prada” (77) and a purse brand-named “Farrutx” (117). Every object

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mentioned not only has a use value, but more importantly, a sign value. By way of the
name brand, Ana carefully constructs herself as a woman is adept in not only
consumerism, but also is exceedingly familiar with luxury goods (as she possesses them)
and name brand. By way of consuming these particular goods, Ana negotiates and re-
appopriates them via her bodily text. In doing so, she deﬁnes herself, which is also a
process of differentiation or exclusion. As Bourdieau elaborates: “The competition for
luxury good, ‘emblems of class’, is one dimension of the struggle to impose the dominant
principle of domination” (232).

Through her ﬁrst person narration, Ana is eager to express her knowledge of
contemporary style throughout her story; she presents herself as someone in a position to
recognize ‘emblems of class’. Ana, a thirty-two year old married housewife, is the
daughter of a mother who was “nifta de familia bien de San Sebastian” (82) and a father
who “malvivia en un cuartucho desfondado de una pensién de la calle Huertas, en la que
el frio era tan intenso que pegaba dentelladas y por la noche lo obligaba a dormir con dos
jerséis puestos y un gorro de lana” (84). Yet, this protagonist declares herself product of
her mother’s family “La familia de mama es mi familia. Los abuelos que me han criado
y con los que he‘pasado todos los veranos en el caserén de San Sebastian” (85) as she
professes that with respect to her father’s family “no sé mucho” (86). From a very tender
age, Ana identiﬁed herself with her mother’s family and being the oldest sister, was
intensely inﬂuenced and conditioned by traditional discourses on decency and proper
comportment for women, which she succinctly illustrates in the following analogy.

Alguien me podo a mi, creo, y por eso soy como soy, ordenada y de buen

aspecto. Ninguna rama ha crecido por donde no debia. Soy un arbusto

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podado que ha crecido merced a las indicaciones de los otros. Una tij era

se llev6 por delante las yemas rebeldes, los futuros capullos, las rosas

cubiertas de espinas (90).
Using the comparison of pruning bushes, she indicates that her body and self, much like
the roses, were plucked and shaped by her upbringing so as to be the perfect woman and
all that it constituted, so that nothing unﬁt would nor could emerge. Her mother is
described as a woman of means and taste, connoted by the luxury brand names that she
was able to consume as well as her stunning physical aspect: “. . .mama tenia dinero de
sobra para pagarse un traje de Scherrer si queria. . .Mama es guapa. Muy guapa. Los
chicos de su clase la apodan la Sueca por lo de la melena lacia y rubia y los ojos grises”
(83). Ana’s mother bequests to her the blond mane of hair. More importantly, though,
her legacy to Ana is cultural capital. Ana’s mother provides for her daughter, as well as
the reader, an image of secure bourgeois and propertied marriage. This image clearly
represents what Ana’s mother anticipates for her daughter, and Ana for herself.

Although Ana is self-described as an attractive, married young woman her

narration begins from the assumption that there must be more to life than how her’s has
unraveled. The ﬁrst chapter that gives Ana voice is “H de hastio” in which she tediously
describes the monotony and profound sadness of her life, also hinting at her unhealthy
formation of subjectivity.

Cristina se ha marchado y ha dej ado en el aire su perfume, un aroma

dulen que no sé identiﬁcar. No es una marca conocida. Sera pachuli o

algo asi que habra comprado en un mercadillo de esos modemos. Habria

podido decirle muchas cosas, y sin embargo he pasado la mayor parte del

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tiempo sin abrir la boca, revolviendo inr'rtilmente la cabeza en busca de un
tema de conversacién. Creo que al ﬁnal se ha marchado porque no me
aguantaba mas. La aburro, o la deprimo, o arnbas cosas a la vez. Y la
verdad es que no la culpo. Me ha dej ado sola en este salOn. Sola, como
paso casi todas las maﬁanas. Borj a esta en el trabajo y el niﬁo en la
guarderia. No tengo de quién cuidar, excepto de mi rrrisma. Y ni siquiera
eso sé hacerlo bien. (81)
Ana represents a case of the contradictory realities of consumption. The location that
deﬁnes Ana is her home, and this space holds the promise of a distinctive lifestyle. Yet
as the reader comes to understand, Ana’s implicit needs cannot be fulﬁlled by the
bourgeois comforts. Likewise, no man, lifestyle nor house can provide her the active
subj ect-formation she desires.

While Ana did study and prepare herself for a profession, “decidi estudiar
secretariado porque algo habia que hacer” (180), her true aspiration was to be cared for
ﬁnancially so that she could remain a housewife “no podia pasarme el dia metida en casa
fregando y planchando y ordenando, por mucho que eso fuera lo r'mico que me apeteciera
hacer” (180). Furthermore, Ana maintains a very traditional fantasy of femininity; the
white wedding remains her dream, despite her mother’s bitter admonishments’”. In spite
of this and the fact that she was not a virgin, she is consumed by having a white dress
ceremony in San Fermin de los Navarros, a very old church in Madrid, with maids of

honor and a reception at the Mayte Commodore, an upscale, ﬁne dining establishment

 

6’ Her mother was quite bitter about her failed marriage and as a result believed the entire institution to be
“una solemne tonteria” (181).

171

with a tradition of more than forty years“. It is ironic that as she confesses her desire for
tradition, Ana switches it up with the contemporary glamour of the designer name. Her
pursuit of the traditional white wedding, though, is not that innocent; she wanted the
world to know, especially Antonio, her former heart throb, that she indeed was worthy of
consuming the fantasy:
el hecho de que Borj a ﬁrera amigo de toda la vida de Antonio, e1 saber que
Antonio acabaria por enterarse que habia quien valoraba lo que él habia
despreciado, que me valoraba hasta el punto de querer hacerme la madre
de sus hijos, de querer reconocer ante Dios y ante los hombres que yo
valia la pena. (181)
Ironic, also, is that she reunited with her husband — at that time he was a ﬁiend ﬁom her
childhood summers spent in Donosti - at the major chain of department stores in Spain,
El Corte Inglés.

In Ana’s perspective, marriage, like the wedding, is frequently imagined in terms
of commodities. Despite profound changes in the identities and roles of Spanish women
in the last thirty years, Ana confesses the conventional nature of her aspirations; her
desire is for a male provider:

Estuvimos saliendo durante cinco ailos, y practicamente desde el principio
se dio por hecho que nos casariamos en cuanto Borja acabara la carrera, y
yo, que sabia muy bien que nunca haria otra cosa que dedicarme a mi casa
y a mis niﬁos de la misma manera que llevaba dedicandome a la casa y a

mis hennanas desde que se habia marchado mi padre. (180)

 

6’ Ana lost her virginity to Borja’s close childhood friend, Antonio, who raped her ﬁfteen years earlier.
When she tried to confront him about what happened nearly two decades ago, his only response was “no se'
de qué me hablas” (186).

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The expectation of a traditional marriage remains ultimately unchallenged.

Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas evokes a sense of dissatisfaction in women’s
lives, a dissatisfaction that is manifest in Ana’s dull, monotonous routine mixed with
prescription chemical enhancers, that is assumed to be answered by a man. Ana
sorrowfully articulates the impossible combination of desires. The prevalence with
which these anxieties are articulated in contemporary popular women’s writing suggests
that these irreconcilable demands are material contradictions in the expectations of
femininity in the late twentieth century. As manifest in this novel, it seems that
contemporary femininity is expected to be, and women are demanding of themselves that
they be, concurrently glamorous and maternal, cosmopolitan and homemakers, modern
and stay-at-home wives. The manner in which this is internalized in Ana, results in the
production of an unhealthy subjectivity.

In Ana’s situation, consumption is offered as a means of reconciling these
conﬂicting demands and of achieving a resolution; the protagonist is presented as a
contemporary woman with an apparent inﬁnite variety of lifestyle choices — as
exempliﬁed through the other Gaena sisters - and the choices are presented as consumer
choices. Lauren Langrnan in the article “Neon Cages: Shopping for Subjectivity”
contends that the pleasures of consumption are in the possibilities of a multiplicitiy of
modes of being. She afﬁrms that shopping can provide a:

...commercially produced fantasy world of commodiﬁed goods, images
and leisure activities that gradually have transformed desire and provide

packaged self-irnages to a distinctive form of subjectivity. A decentered

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selﬂrood has become a plurality of intermittent, disconnected, recognition-

seeking spectacles of self-presentation. (40)
Ana’s narrative, similar to that of Cristina’s, is about packaged self-images that celebrate
the commodiﬁcation of desire; yet, while they are ‘disconnected’, they can be read to
promote a speciﬁc presentation, as there are deﬁnite recommended modes of self in
Ana’s narrative- from images portrayed in “Elle” (193) to packaged concepts in “Mia”
(157). Elaborating upon and extending the theories of de Certeau, Rob Shields has
contended that consumption is via for the active production of self. He asserts: “There is
a need to treat consumption as an active, committed production of self and of society,
which rather than assimilating individuals to styles, appropriates codes and fashions,
which are made into one’s own” (2). Indeed Ana is an active and compromised
consumer inextricably preoccupied with the construction or production of self. The
repetition of her consumption acts in conjunction with dominance of brand names points
to the construction of self within an exclusive grammar of consumer goods. An object-
in-use or material good is never simply anonymous rather it is a “Farrutx” or “GastOn y
Daniela” (76), and if not carrying the brand name than its origin is that which endows the
good with an air of distinction, such as the the bronze faucets she imported ﬁom
Trentino, Italy. The name brand even carries over to the realm of the grocery store which
further suggests the strict hierarchy of labels in her narrative “Scotch Brite Fibra Verde
con esponj a (3x2 precio especial), fregasuelos Brillax, latas (melocotOn familiar en
alrnibar Bamboleo, champiﬁones El Cidacos, esparragos de Navarra a1 natural Iiiaqui,

guisantes Gigante Verde, huevas de lumpo Captain Sea, atr'm claro Calvo pack de tres

174

latas)” (115). She does not only purchase these goods for pleasure or simple sustenance;
the goods should be recognized as signiﬁers of class and style.
This housewife character must work through a problematization of the home,
which propels Ana to examine her subjectivity as it is intimately linked to the domestic.
Ana questions whether the home offers a space of realization for the female identity.
Topical representations of her home can be read as equating the domain with
requiescence. Like decorating magazines, Ana presents a vision of home immaculate, so
clean it denies the existence of a family that inhabits it. There is little evidence of human
occupation except for the odd mention of a material good falling victim to her child. Her
pride and joy that was birthed — not her son but a room forged in her image - through
consumption articulates a mismatch of perspectives: there is movement articulated
through the vaults and niches paired with a traditional aire due to the antiques. Cristina
describes the room in erotic detail:
...el sofa Roche Bobois. Las cortinas del salén, de Gastén y
Daniela. . .Arcos, homacinas y diferentes alturas de suelo y techo dan
movimiento a un interior dominado por el blanco. Toda la carpinteria y
metalica la ha realizado Vilches.... Un costurero de pino viejo comprado
en una ahnoneda y restaurado. . .hace las veces de mesilla. Sobre él, un
teléfono anti guo, adquirido también en una ahnoneda y elegido para no
desentonar con el resto de la decoracién, un arrnatoste negro y brillante
que parece un escarabajo megaatémico. (76)

The description of the room, forged according to her intimate desires, outlines the

paradox of home-making and housekeeping argued by Janice Radway (1986) as

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“ideological seams” where theory and reality conjoin in a mish-mashed manner
provoking the emergence of contradictory desires in women: establishing a home for
familiar comfort versus making a home in a sexy vision so as to erase all traces of the
inhabitants. Due to the fact that ideology, in concept, is not rippleless and smooth-
running, Radway utilizes the term “patchwork quilt” to deﬁne ideology as it is composed
of “institutionalized but variable power relations, practices and activities” (109). This
theory is signiﬁcant as it highlights the areas that in practice do not mesh ﬂuidly with the
presuppositions of discourse, yet are mixed together and thought to be organic.
Nevertheless, the sections that are unevenly bound together signal turbulence among
varying desires, all of which are mediated by a patriarchal ideology that does not esteem
nor permit a woman to be whoever she is. This situation is ﬁrrther aggrandized via the
bombarding of packaged images by mass culture, which liberates and constrains the
female subject. In sum, this theory advances a series of fundamental concepts: the
junctions illustrate a mismatch of ideals that compose our desires, which is also the locus
for contemplation of redressing ﬁssures in the ideological understanding that buttresses
our desires; nevertheless, as the symbolic is “driven by conﬂicts, slippages and imperfect
joinings” (109-110) a perfect ﬁt among desires and junctions cannot be reconciled.

Ana herself feels the effects produced by the uneven conjoining of the
contradictory ideologies: “me siento como la pieza de un rompecabezas que aparecio por
equivocacién en la caja que no correspondia. No encajo” (113). She is plagued by the
constant demands and realities of her household life, exemplifying the contradictory
reality of consumption. On one hand, she confesses that her dream has always been to be

a wife and a mother, caring for the home. Yet, on the other, she ﬁnds herself severely

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depressed, “no puedo pasarme la vida encerrada en casa, sola, llorando como una
Magdalena” (113), almost to the point that it paralyzes her life. Ana confesses:

Tedio y tiempo empiezan por la misma letra, y las horas y los

dias pasan sin hacer nada, como una sucesiOn inacabable de hojas en el

calendario. Es muy aburrido vivir cuando no tienes nada que hacer y

nadie en quien apoyarte. Mi marido y mi hijo, ya lo sé, pero ya no me

basta. Aqui encerrada en casa todo el dia. . .(149)
For a time Ana, through her consumption of fashion and design/decoration magazines,
could barricade herself ﬁ'om feelings of inadequacy and extreme isolation“. Reading this
genre of magazine served as an escape hatch for Ana from the continuous demands of
daily life. Within the space of her home she could fashion and consume irnaginaries —
which ﬁt in well with her daily routine- through partaking in the world of material goods,
while securing for herself a personal space of albeit temporary relief. Through her
consumption of luxurious, ﬁne items, Ana was able to escape tensions surrounding her
marriage and associated with her identity as a mother; hence, she is liberated from
constraints imposed due to gender while simultaneously permitting her to ﬁt perfectly
within them. This defense mechanism is evident in her monologue as she consistently
ﬂips between two discourses: one in which she relates conﬂictive troubling memories
and another where she elaborates upon cleaning methods or her collection of ﬁne home
goods. This measure — detailing the beauty of a room or the procedure of cleaning a
particular item- can be read as a mode to congeal time, if only temporarly, so as to feel

control within one’s life. Moreoever, through her tedious efforts of decoration and

 

’5 The images disseminated by fashion and decoration magazines may be read as vehicles that perpetuate
the binary oppositions and reinforce the naturalization of gendered identities.

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housekeeping, Ana may arrange and perfect each room, albeit unoccupied, so it is
reproduction of her self — clean, in order, under control, and of high quality.
Yo siempre he estado orgullosa de este salén. L0 be mantenido
pulcrisimo, y tarnpoco es que sea tan facil. Hay que pasar la aspiradora
una vez a1 mes, como minimo, por sillas, sofas y cortinas. Hay que lavar
los visillos también una vez al mes con agua y jabOn, sin frotarlos ni
retorcerlos. Para darles consistencia una vez limpios hay que sumergirlos
en agua con azr’rcar y colgarlos todavia hr’rmedos a ﬁn de eliminar
cualquier arruga. (82)
The space of the home — the area that deﬁnes Ana — is maintained perfectly to the senses:
there is not even a speck of dust nor a slight wrinkle to tarnish the appearance. She
received the utmost satisfaction from cleaning up a stain. Through her consumption of
these high-end products, all of which are white, Ana’s body can be read as a text of purity
that is maintained by her continual upkeep of these goods and practices.

Nevertheless, while participating in the community of the yuppis, those who have
achieved immense ﬁnancial success and display that through their many material
belongings and aire of elitism, Ana is immensely distraught. Through contemplation of
memories and her personal history this Gaena sister questions her existence “Si la vida se
pudiera limpiar igual que unos visillos, si pudiéramos hacer desaparecer nuestras
manchas en una lavadora, todo seria mas facil” (82). While consuming the role of
housekeeping and house-making, Ana buys into the patriarchal belief that the house

constructs her home; it is her territory of inﬂuence. According to Kim Golombisky, the

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act of home-making provides the woman with a highly stimulating, but ultimately

impossible fantasy:
...because the object of desire, perfect rooms, mirrors an illusion of her
more powerful self. How silently drives the engine of its contradictions.
She can never achieve this standard she measures herself against. She
visualizes making the perfect home for herself and her family. But perfect
rooms, standing in for the perfect home, do not accommodate the
household’s people. (8)

Despite her control over the household -— a control that is waning - Ana, confronted by an

abysmal absence, can only describe her life in terms of “Nada, absolutarnente nada.

Nada de nada” (77) where she cannot even undertake basic activities of human

sustenance: “Comer y dormir. Comer poco y dormir menos ar’m. Cuidar de mi marido y

de mi niiio. Cuidarles poco” (7 7). Ana’s body as a text of femininity depicts the glaring

contradictions legislated by mass culture. As Susan Bordo argues:
On the one hand, our culture still widely advertises domestic conceptions
of femininity, the ideological moorings for a rigorously dualistic sexual
division of labor that casts women as chief emotional and physical
nurturer. The rules for this construction of femininity (and I speak here in
a language both symbolic and literal) require that women learn to feed
others, not the self, and to construe any desires for self-nurturance and
self-feeding as greedy and excessive. (171)

As a result, women are encouraged to develop an emotional economy that is totally based

on the other. To make it through her day Ana submits her body to a regimen of chemical

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warfare, taking “tranxilium” to sleep and “Dicel” in the morning to awaken her and
overcome the sedative effects of her nighttime drug; these are interchanged with a
medley of other mood-altering chemicals such as “donorrnil”, “minilip”, “adofén”,
lexatin”. As Ana herself admits “. . .creo que no hay pastilla que carnbia el animo que yo
no haya probado” (229).

Ana’s existence has been consumed with achieving and exempliﬁying the dictates
of the patriarchal system. Throughout her life Ana had been informed by the patriarchal
economy, the church, and her family (mother) that women were to incarnate the
proverbial ‘good girl’ image. This further extended into adulthood by becoming
subservient, passive wives and mothers. This sister, referred to as “1a dulce”, “la estable”,
“e1 epitome de la cordura”, proclaims to have it all: “tengo un marido maravilloso y un
niflo guapisimo y una casa que podria salir fotograﬁada en el Elle decoraciOn” (118); yet
feels completely empty, “el caso es que las horas y los dias se me pasan sin hacer nada,
como una sucesiOn inacable de hojas en el calendario, y yo no paro de llorar, la vida se
me escapa por los ojos brillantes” (157-8). Her subjectivity, contingent upon her
consumption of high-end goods and rhetoric, is not so much destabilized by consumption
of the goods that denot upper class. This is illustrated by her fantasy of constructing her
identity similar to that of her sister Rosa; while she may evolve in terms of profession,
she stil displays a desire for high-end goods. After having dedicated her life to adhering
to the naturalized model of woman, taking extreme caution so as to ﬁt the mold, Ana
looks with eyes of resignation at the power paradigm: “Lo r'mico que importaba, lo r'rnico
que ha importado siempre, era limpiar una mancha. Pero eso tampoco importa ya. Al ﬁn

y al cabo, ya no me obsesiona la limpieza” (193-4). Powerless and desperate, the oldest

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Gaena sister feels ﬂoating and disconnected, as if she were a speck of dust, mucking the
surrounding environment that she herself created, “Ana duerrne ahora con un extrar’io,
conﬁnada en una casa que ha demostrado no necesitarla, recluida en un calabozo que ella
misma ha decorado. Y yo me siento vacia como una mujer burbuj a” (194). As LOpez
argues, her illness elucidates the notion that Betty Friedan treats in 1963 in The Feminine
Mystique as “the problem that has no name” (L6pez, 3). This powerful book addresses
the social lived reality of the housewife in the 1950s uncovering the maladies suffered by
stay-at-home women such as oppression, psychological damage resulting from isolation,
and severely constrained options. Ana demonstrates cogently the problem facing
housewives: the yearning to desire properly.

Living according to the dominant precepts, Ana ﬁnds herself miserable and seeks
to erase those feelings through the consumption of prescription drugs. Indeed she
increases her doses to the point where she is constantly “atiborrada de pastillas” (227)
and the only way —— she believes - to feel the ﬁrll effect of the drugs is to down them with
alcohol. Faced with arrested development, the oldest Gaena sister is unable to express
her emotions to her family and the only mode that gives her the exit she needs is making
anonymous phone calls to her sister Rosa in which she plays Purcell’s La hora fatal.
Through playing this song for her sister, it lends to Ana the voice she carmot summon of
her own.

Como no sé como decir estoy sola, estoy desesperada, quiero ser como tr'r
y necesito ayuda Me limitaré a hacerle escuchar La hora fatal,
convencida de que el desgarro de la cancién expresa perfectamente e1

estado en que me siento y trasrrrite c6mo la idea de la muerte no me

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abandona en ningrin momento, cOmo vivo en una agonia opaca e ingrata,

encenagada en el tedio. (231)
Ironically Ana believes that if she were in Rosa’s position — a self-made woman — her life
would not be the chaos that it currently is. She dreams about being an unmarried
business-woman replete with the briefcase. Even her body language — in her dream —
embodies the certainty and efﬁciency of the business world: “Me veo como una muj er
eﬁciente y segura, vestida con un elegante traje de chaqueta oscuro, que se mueve como
un pez en un mar de pasillos y despachos, enarbolando un attache negro lleno de valiosos
documentos” (230). As a television consumer, she yearns to be the protagonist of Ley de
Los Angeles, a woman that men admire and other women envy.

Upon waking one morning, Ana confronted her husband, Borja, and announced to
him that she desired a divorce; this action elicited two phone calls: ﬁrst Borj a called
Ana’s mother who replied to him that this was quite deviant of Ana, the second phone
call was made to a psychologist to validate their collective claim that this indeed was
abnormal. Much to the surprise of all, Ana was admitted into a detoxiﬁcation center for
her clandestine chemical dependency and speciﬁcally requested that her mother be
prohibited entrance. Cristina comments “desde que tengo uso de razén Anita siempre ha
sido la niiia de los ojos de mi madre y en la vida ha dado un paso sin consultarla y no me
cabia en la cabeza que la propia Anita hubiera dado instrucciones semej antes” (257).
Upon reuniting with Ana at the center, she solemnly explained to the two that she wanted
a divorce and solicited her sister Rosa’s help. This decision, in particular, recalls
Braidotti’s theory. To approximate the nomadic subjectivity, one must work through

personal experiences, calling upon history, questioning the dualities upon which the

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power structure is centered. Through her choices and actions, Ana becomes an active
agent, cognizant of her life options and possibilities; upon recognizing the futility of her
dreams for salvation, Ana works with the present and strives for her survival. Whereas
she was fabricated as Man’s Other by the binary system of hierarchical dualities, an
opposition that she internalized and thus as a result felt inferior and contemptible, Ana
transgresses the dominant economy through her contemplation of a new conceptual space
and subsequent metarnorphoses of self. While she does not imagine a blueprint for a
perfect location, she is dynamic in her unending process to ﬁnd the truth. In light of this
journey Lucy Sargisson suggests: “The future cannot be programmed in terms of the
present, as constructed by the past. It must be dreamt and imagined according to

desire. . .to subvert and exploit the ways in which our perceptions of reality. . .are

constructed” (225).

Conclusions

“No os lo he dicho todavia: mi madre se llama Eva.
Pero espero que nosotras searnos hijas de Lilith.”
(267)
In the novel Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas Lucia Etxebarria portrays three
divergent representations of femininity in contemporary Spanish society. While they are
descendents of Eva Gaena, their embodiment reveals they are daughters of Lilith“. As

perhaps suggested by their afﬁnity with Lilith, the common factor among Cristina, Rosa,

and Ana is that they represent models of identities that negotiate subjectivity by a

 

6" The ﬁgure of Lilith is famed for being the ﬁrst wife of Adam, created from earth, just like him
Rejecting Adam’s desires, she ﬂees from Eden and is replaced by a subservient Eve, a ﬁgure who does not
have a claim to equality since she was created from his side. Lilith has been portrayed as the archetype of
feminism through her willingness to sacriﬁce paradise for equality and autonomy.

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complex set of resistances and choices through consumption. Explicit to the examples of
identity is the questioning of current gender relationships and naturalized identities. The
three Gaena sisters pursue distinct paths of consumption by which they forge identity and
embody consumption affectually; each woman is intent to pursue identity and either
directly or indirectly questions hierarchies of knowledge. Each of the Gaena sisters is
cognizant of her unique character, which she verbalizes through discerning her self from
the other two women, and their respective imagined communities. For instance, Cristina
quickly labels her older sister Ana as a “maruj a” (21) while admitting that her sister
would render her a “putén” (21). Ana, on the other hand, embodying the paradox of
sporting contemporary names mixed with the tradition of upkeeping her home and family
separates her self from what she deems “Cristina tan modema” (149) and Rosa “todo el
dia con su carrera y su trabajo” (149) whereas Rosa is completely absorbed in her mutant
technological world, blocked off from emotion. Albeit in a dissimilar fashion, these three
women — consciouslessly or not- radicalize the concept of difference. Helene Cixous
tells us:
If woman has always frmctioned “within” the discourse of man, a signiﬁer
that has always referred back to the opposite signiﬁer which armihilates its
speciﬁc energy and diminishes or stiﬂes its very different sounds, it is
time for her to dislocate this “within”, to explode it, turn it around, seize it;
to make it hers, containing it, taking it into her own mouth, biting that
tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get

inside of. And you’ll see with what ease she will spring forth from that

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“within” -— the “within” where she once so drowsily crouched — to

overﬂow at the lips she will cover with foam. (257)
This narrative, via the spectrum of models of identities portrayed and their respective
nomadic wanderings, critiques assigned gender roles, and in doing so, produces a breach
in conventional thinking. As Cixous suggests, the three sisters engage in transgressive
contemplation; they bring their body into the language through various economies not to
invoke closure or salvation. Each comes to the realization vis-a-vis working through
their experiences that the symbolic order and their relationship within and to this
structure must change — I read this as resisting the construction or adherence to any rigid
code. Moreover, through their refusal to deﬁne the essence of woman, these sisters have
come to foster disorder; the instability portrayed is not a simple inversion of patriarchal
values but an attempt to approach the world in a new mOde, “a utopian gesturing toward
an alternative imaginary beyond the constraints of patriarchal thought” (F elski 120). In
this way, the main ﬁmction of the literary production of Etxebarria is to question social
and cultural practices of the patriarchy with the hope of inspring change through
contemplation. While Etxebarria offers no image of the perfect society, by way of her
novel she gives voice to her intolerance for the perpetuation of an absolutist paradigm
and aspires to provide on an imaginary level a radically other world beyond what exists.
This is achieved through the spaces for speculation, subversion, and expression of a

desire for different ways of being.

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Chapter IV: Veo,vea: Consumption and the Dazzling, Diva of Image
Cultural Context

The author, Gabriela Bustelo (1962) is both novelist and translator with a degree
in English Philology“. Her novelistic production includes Veo, veo and Planeta
hembra“. While born in Madrid, this author spent nearly the ﬁrst decade of her life in
Washington DC. Her family re-located to Madrid in the 1970s in the midst of the
disintegration of the Franco regime. While their experiences and literary production are
quite distinct, both Lucia Etxebarria and Gabriela Bustelo share the commonality of a
trans-national perspective gleaned from shifts in location as well as physical distance
from the social, political, and economic epicenter of Spain: Madrid. Much like
Etxebarria, Bustelo - as a result of her dynamic social reality - dialogues with the
international community through her work, evidenced by the use of English terminology,
internationally recognized brand-names, global pop music icons, and the mention of
globalized tourist destinations“. The author herself acknowledges the tremendous power
the inﬂow of cultures has had on Spain — a cultural phenomenon manifest in her writing:

“Fue un recurso que usé en mi primera novela. La inﬂuencia del inglés es enorrne”

 

’7 Gabriela Bustelo has translated a wide rage of works by Edgar Allan Poe, Beverly Cleary, Oscar Wilde,
and Rudyard Kipling.

6’ Similar to Veo,veo, the theme of consumption also appears and weighs heavily in Planeta hembra.
According to the author, the protagonist of Veo,veo, Vania, “es un germen de lo que son las protagonistas
de Planeta hembra” (Interview 2004). This provocative novel takes place at the end of the second
millennium, and depicts a world controlled by the X Party, composed solely of women. The X Party only
permits lesbian love, controls all aspects of information technology, and intends to erase all evidence of the
existence (inﬂuences, achievements, and social conventions) of Man. Furthermore, the novel radically
highlights the communication difﬁculties proliﬁc among the sexes, the dangers associated with advancing
technologies, as well as the manipulation of information. Orriously, however, this group of women spends
enormous amounts of money on their appearance; while they are leaders of the world, they are also
ridiculously obsessed with their coiffure and clothing.

69 For further information regarding the mode in which Peninsular authors’ writing in the ﬁnal decade of
the second millennium have been informed by the inﬂux of global cultures see the article written by José
Maria Izquierdo, “Narradores espaﬁoles novisimos de los aﬂos noventa”

http ://www.hf.uio.no/kri/spansk/emne/spa1 301/textos/sem/ultimanarrativaespizquierdopdf.

186

(Personal Interview 2003). As Bustelo dialogues with the international community
through her work, she also maintains a local discourse in which she focuses on the
nrunerous advancements realized in Spain within the last twenty-ﬁve years. Like
Etxebarria, Bustelo spent her youth between opposing scopes of the political spectrum;
she was born into the Franco dictatorship, resided for a decade in the States, begirming in
the latter half of thel 960s — a period of instability stemming from the Vietnam War and
the human rights struggle -— to return to her birth land, Spain, on the cusp of the collapse
of the dictatorship. Consequently, she was witness, and perhaps more acutely sensitive,
to the changing political dynamics in her country, in particular the effects these
alterations had on the condition of the woman and the dynamics of conventional
structures. During an interview Bustelo stated: “Histéricamente, Espafia ha avanzado en
el r’rltimo cuarto de siglo como no lo habia hecho nunca...Conviene recordar que hace
veinticinco aﬁos una espaﬁola no podia tener una cuenta bancaria sin permiso de su
marido” (Personal Interview 2003).

With the imminent collapse of the Franco dictatorship in 1975 and the installation
of the new Constitution in 197 8, the Spanish society found itself in a position to be
spectator and participator in international events via the television and other media
communications (Riquer i Permanyer 265). Indeed, this political transformation, which
sparked a reverberation of changes far beyond the political sphere, altered the very
concept of Spanish identity, individual and collective. Likewise, advances in technology
communications have led to the acceleration of the inﬂux of globalization of cultures, re-

constructing the very notion of identity and social reality in this country. Bustelo afﬁrms:

187

Siendo estrictos, todo es consumo. Hoy en dia e1 consurnismo y el
mercantilismo han invadido terrenos donde nunca debieron entrar, que aun
si somos sinceros, probablemente el amor, e1 matrimonio e incluso la
amistad han sido siempre utilitaristas en mayor o menor grado. (Interview
2003)
Her revelation about the proliferation of consumption in the Spanish society —— as well as
on an international level - further suggests its signiﬁcance as a ﬁrndamental constituent
of personal and collective identity. Additionally, it hints at the ambivalence about
consumption and the various readings that it may yield.

Alongside the piece-meal effacement of the old order and the inﬁltration of mass
consumer society, reality transformed into signs and time fragmented into a series of
present sites (Fuat Firat 83). As a consequence of the reiﬁcation of a new order, one in
which consumerism is at the nucleus, citizens converted into consumers began to learn
and adopt new codes stemming from the close proximity and intimate relationships
fabricated with meaning-laden objects. By means of acquiring and consuming goods, a
subject associates the self with the meanings embedded in those materials; these adopted
messages, then, coalesce with the self. Hence the consumption of goods is an integral
part of postmodern identity both social and personal, as attested by Bustelo. In this
context, according to Richard Dunn “. . .sources of identity have shifted historically from
the internalization and integration of social roles to the appropriation of disposable
commodities, images, and techniques, selected and discarded at will from the extensive
repertoire for consumer culture” (114). The posing of such possibilities afforded by

consumerism can be read as a pluralization of social realities, differentiating and

188

articulating new vocabularies for personal identiﬁcation. Dunn afﬁrms: “Contrary to the
critics of mass culture and consumerism, then, contemporary consumer culture has thus
in a sense made it possible to contemplate the commodity as a vehicle for a more fully
and creatively developed self” (114). Following Dunn’s argument, then, cultures of
consumption inﬂect personal identity with new accents and provide the self with the
freedom of identity election. Bustelo similarly avows: “Es verdad que el consumo puede
ser liberador y es verdad que la liberaciOn de la mujer ha acabado con muchos valores
tradicionales” (Personal Interview 2003). This writer acknowledges the potential
autonomy that the realm of consumption can offer an individual, especially the woman,
as it may be a site for active self-formation. In this way, the woman has the agency to
subvert as well as resist the organic and essentialized notion of woman. “El cuerpo
propio es una realidad mucho mas presente para una mujer que para un hombre”
(Personal Interview 2003). As she highlights, there has historically existed a connection
between woman and nature and woman and body. Throughout history, woman has been
deﬁned as man’s opposite; he is the subject and she, consequently, is the other. The mind
has been associated with Man, and as such, rationality and logic are posited as superior;
the construction of Woman is akin to nature, associated with the body, sex, and
irrationality. Hence, the very concept of woman cannot be separated from her body, but
rather it is intimately associated with her subject and identity. While acknowledging the
potential liberation offered by the realm of consumption, the author cautiously mentions
the seductive powers of the material world and the potential contradictory reality that it
yields. She states: [. . .] la asociacién entre consumo y feminidad es peligrosa” (Personal

Interview 2003). While acknowledging the potential gains offered by consumerism,

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Bustelo likewise advises caution: “La mujer tiene la pOSibilidad de modelar y
transformar su cuerpo, pero esto siempre tiene consecuencias, a veces negativas, sobre su
vida. Vania esta experimentando para ver qué sucede en funciOn de que su imagen sea
una o otra” (Interview 2004). These transformations effected through varying cultures of
consumption as well as the resulting embodiment is poignantly illustrated through the
socially lived experiences of the protagonists in both of her novels, Veo, veo and Planeta
hembra.

Stemming perhaps from her personal narratives and experiences, consistent
among the work of Gabriela Bustelo is a probing critique of dominant cultural symbols
and language. Her work is a creative forum that questions and subverts the symbolic
order by toying with it via her usage of parody, irony, fresh language, and play on gender
performance. Through her employment of these resources, the author appropriates
language for her own ends: to interrogate the supposedly organic nature of gender. The
re-appropriation of the symbolic, as evidenced in this author’s production, is dissonant
because, as Judith Butler theorized, the act manipulates the underlying discourses within
these symbols and thus alters the social order (Butler Bodies That Matter 53). In this
process, the power dynamics imbricated in cultural signs are transformed, and by re-
signifying their meanings they become empowering. Vis-a-vis her critique of the
hegemonic systems, Bustelo highlights the ﬂuidity of identity in our postmodern era as
well as proposes alternative spaces for becoming woman. In the study of this writer’s
novel Veo, veo, written in 1996, I analyze the portrayal of female subjectivity through the

optic of consumption, focusing on various cultures such as fashion, music, drugs, and the

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female gaze. Concorrritantly, this chapter will explore the resulting embodiment that
emerges as a result of the personal election of the female consumer.

Veo, veo plays back a particular version of reality that suggests an active
registering of social alterations — especially with respect to the role of the woman-
occurring in Spain in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Gabriela Bustelo
navigates a rich and complicated landscape of social change in Spain, and by way of her
work, engages with dynamic modes of femininity that consequently tells us something of
real signiﬁcance about the society. The novel, peppered with cinematographic
techniques, reﬂects the last years of the “movida madrileﬁa”, roughly equivalent to the
‘movement’ or the ‘scene’ in English. In her meditation on this time period, Gabriela
elaborates:

“La movida” como corriente artistica y cultural afecto a personas de la
clase acomodada, aunque también fue un despertar de la capital de Espaiia
tras cuarenta aflos de letargo. ParadOjicamente, la libertad era mucho
mayor en la Espaﬁa de los ochenta que en la de hoy. Los horarios
espaﬂoles se han adaptado a los europeos, esta prohibido el consumo de
alcohol en la calle y las ciudades son peligrosas de noche. “La movida”
ya es sclo una anécdota histOrica. (Personal Interview 2003)
After the death of Franco in 1975 “la movida” emerged as a pop cultural scene that
embodied a cocktail of humor, wild eccentricity, and passion. At its nucleus radiated
cultural re-awakening, creativity, and intellectualism. The late mayor-poet-professor
Tiemo Galvan was signiﬁcant to the upstart of this atmosphere; his efforts — creations of

parks and renovation of public and private spaces — catalyzed this explosion of artistic,

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intellectual and social life which translated into a new-found freedom intimately linked
with and exercised through cultures of consumption"). The social background — the
collapse of the suffocating dictatorship — was propitious for the consumer boom in the
19805, as it permitted new concepts to be imported into the country.

The “movida”, a period roughly between 1977-1985 can be considered the
conﬂuence of a series of changes occurring in Madrid on various levels: politics, culture,
and economy. It manifest as an underground phenomena among an intellectually curious
and artistically inclined group of youths who espoused a punk ideology, it represented a
breach ﬁom the hegemonic power structure as those that participated back lashed against
social conformism. This was realized in a number of ways through various artists. For
instance, through the medium of cinema AlmodOvar celebrated sexual desire that was
repressed for forty years under the dictatorship. Another artist that surfaced during the
“movida”, Ouka Lele, toyed with evocative representations via the camera lens.
Operating against the grain like the aforementioned masters, Gabriela Bustelo gloriﬁes
this newly acquired sexual freedom vis-a-vis the protagonist Vania and the mode that she
experiences her body-in-use. This transgressive ideology is reﬂected in the novel Veo,
veo on a medley of levels. To begin with, bearing striking similarity to a ﬁlm, the novel
resembles the genre of ﬁlm noir“. Yet it transcends this genre and its authorial presence

through parody and irony, which will be elaborated upon later. Likewise, the novel

 

7° For further information, see the following web site: http://www.uclm.es/area/constitucional/l 8-97.htm as
well as $610 se vive una vez (1991), a foundational book that treats theoretical and historical accents of the
movida, written by José Luis Gallero.

7' Film noir is the French term for the “black ﬁlm” genre that peaked in the forties and ﬁfties. This genre
has roots in detective novels produced during the 19205 and 19305 by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond
Chandler. In general, the plots of this genre portray a contemporary world that has been corrupted by
exterior forces, and consequently lost its moral certainty. Furthermore, the prevailing cynicism of the
characters reﬂected the reality of the atomic bomb, Cold War, totalitarianism, propaganda, and the devious
power of the government and press.

192

reﬂects the detective genre in that at its essence, it is the investigation of a puzzle: the
search for Truth. The backlash against authority and linearity is acknowledged through
the absence of a singular tightly woven plot; one that is mediated by a variety of
discourses such as pop-psychology, detective literature, and popular media and culture.
Furthermore, the deﬁance embodied in this transgression is inﬂuenced by three factors:
the temporal, the spatial, and the affectual.

The novel Veo, veo consistently interrogates the notion of One, at the same time
that it unveils the possibility for multiplicity: things are not what they seem, people
change identities, and there are unforeseen twists and turns along the journey. The
nucleus of the work is Madrid in the 19805, a society intensely affected by globalization
of cultures and media technologies, reﬂected in the opening chapter of the novel, which
bears the name of an American icon. “Mickey Rourke”, chapter one, details the central
conﬂict of the novel and the protagonist Vania: a persecutory neurosis that someone is
watching her every move. After her consultation with a psychiatrist, who bore a striking
similarity in appearance to American icon Mickey Rourke, she arrived at multiple
realizations. With respect to her concerns regarding her mental health, she concluded
that she was not crazy. Moreover, she felt unable to conﬁde in or trust the commodiﬁed
image of her psychiatrist. He was: “sospechosarnente alto y guapo”, and his ofﬁce space
“una habitacién pequefia, con una ventana que debia dar a un patio interior, por la poca
luz que habia. Los muebles eran de esos de pino lechoso y para cohno de desgracias,
estaba todo abarrotado de almohadones con ﬂoripondios Liberty” (9). Indeed, his
appearance did not correspond with her pro-conceived conception: “lo que yo esperaba

era una especie de vej ete judio con barba, ﬁrrne y paternal a la vez. Y por supuesto, que

193

tuviera muebles de caoba y butacas de esas de enero que se amoldan a la nalga. Y un
reloj de mesa inglés” (10). In selecting a therapist, she is consuming not only his advice
but also the commodiﬁed image that he displays. After his trite recommendation to take
a vacation, Vania leaves his ofﬁce — conﬁrming her trust in packaged images and feeling
her stalker at her heels — and seeks out a detective whose image and surroundings
coincide with his profession. In this vein, chapter two “El Cejas” succinctly describes the
detective hired by Vania to help her solve her troubles:
El barrio era de bastante peor tono, la puerta mas sucia y desvencij ada,
harta de hacer de umbral cutre. El hombre que salio a abrir en esta
ocasién no me defraudo para nada. Chaparreta, cejijunto y con un
Ducados en la boca. E1 perfecto detective hispanico. (11)
His rough-around-the-edges appearance coupled with less than ﬂashy location render him
the perfect person to get to the bottom of her dilemma. The remaining chapters of the
novel (sixty ﬁve in total) revolve around humorous and ironic escapades to uncover the
root of Vania’s neurosis: a stalker who has gained access to her surroundings, both
apartment and car, and planted several secret microphones and video-cameras disguised
as two-way rrrirrors to record her in her most vulnerable moments. In her narration,
Bustelo portrays the journey of the protagonist on her quest for the Truth; along the way,
she awakens to a consciousness that there is not One but a multiplicity of truths. As such,
Bustelo toys with the hegemonic discourse through her use of irony and unveils a
protagonist who actively constructs herself vis-a-vis her relationship with space and

material goods such as fashion, music, and the gaze.

194

Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses the many trials that confront the
protagonist. From the most prosaic to the more spectacular, the reader maintains a
vantage point to observe: ﬁ'om the mystery caller who asks to speak with Soledad to the
protagonist’s own discovery of a “cilindro diminuto. Era un micrOfono” (21) in her
lavish Gastén and Daniela sheets. Yet despite the numerous insidious tribulations, we
attest to a female subject who is an adept consumer, from brand names and luxury goods
to marijuana and cocaine, she possesses equal knowledge of high-end clothing and home
goods as she does of the underground space of the “movida” nightlife and the
accoutrements that accompany the particular location. Each of the various
aforementioned components - brand names, drugs, music, underground venues - in
conjunction with an atmosphere of sexual freedom serve as articulation points that work
upon and produce, in Foucauldian terms, the selfhood of Vania.

The modus operandi of Pelaez, also known as ‘El cejas’ due to his unibrow, is to
ﬁnd and apprehend whoever is spying on the protagonist: “un hombre con un bi gote en
forma de manillar de bici” (13). The best way, he proposes, to achieve this is to ﬂesh out
her personal history and also follow Vania inconspicuously to her usual hangouts to stake
out from a distance whoever it is that is spying on her. As an observer of the narrative,
the reader learns that Vania is a twenty-six year old scriptwriter working in “una
productora de audiovisuales” (12). While she is not “forrada” with cash, she earns a
decent income, which permits her to own a Mazda, rent an apartment in a reformed
palace on calle Pez, and purchase a myriad of material goods. As the story unfolds
revealing a number of intrigues, the reader ﬁnds out that the protagonist takes great

pleasure in conspicuous consumption as she represents relative wealth, is in a position to

195

participate in the multiplication of material goods, and takes pride in this fact”. For
instance, after her initial meeting with Pelaez she states: “El psiquiatra me habia
despertado ligerarnente la libido y el detective me habia servido de psiquiatra. Lo malo
era que Pelaez, mi recién contratado sabueso, se habia quedado absolutamente
convencido de que yo era una tronada paranoica” (14). Feeling static — after her meetings
there had been no advancement in the resolution of her conﬂict — she turns to the material
world to ease her concerns. “Me bajé en el Vips y en un arrebato masoca cogi el video
Orquidea salvaje. Debia ser at'm peor que Nueve semanas y media, pero como mi ex
psiquiatra se parecia a Mickey Rourke, ver la pelicula era la forma de exorcizarles a los
dos juntos” (14). Through consumption of imported North American movies and icons,
Vania not only participates in a ﬂuid international dialogue, interacting with cultural
knowledge, but also channels and alleviates her preoccupations via consumption of the
cinema; that is, she mediates her supposed “neurosis” (10) through her consumption
practices.

Writing against the grain, Bustelo reopens closures that vilify, destroy, or
otherwise contain the protagonist, as well as her imagined community, who threatens
patriarchal control and its symbolic order. The transgressions that form part of the
architecture of the plot are embodied on various planes: temporal, spatial, and affectual.
The novel set amongst the backdrop of the “movida” diverges in two opposing
temporalities. Bustelo skillfully creates two separate yet convergent worlds in which the
protagonist, Vania, maneuvers: the day — hours spent at the “productora” (24) or home

full of concern and plotting to ﬁgure out the puzzle of her “mania persecutoria” (21) —

 

7‘ Resulting from multiple discoveries, the reader and the protagonist arrive at the following knowledge:
Vania is an heiress of a considerable sum of money, a fact that she was not privy to due to her
grandmother’s over-protective nature.

196

and the night — a world of glamour heightened by expressionistic scenes involving the
consumption of myriad elements. With respect to the two temporal planes, it is
interesting to note the spatial conﬁnes Vania negotiates. She largely interacts with the
consumer society within speciﬁc territories of the Spanish capital - Malasaﬁa and
Chueca- locales historically associated with bachnallian pleasures. Devoid of numerous
historic monuments and palaces that characterize the majority of Madrid, the labyrinthine
streets of Malasai’ia and Chueca house countless sites such as Pacha, Archys, El Café, and
Via Lactea to name a few. Likewise, these districts are hailed as the cradle of the
“movida” movement, which by night bristle with Madrid’s alternative scene. These
spaces represent contingents of experiential consumption by which Vania articulates her
subversive identity, as the practices associated with them intimately affect Vania’s
conception of identity and belonging. Ben Malbon elaborates upon the formation of the
individual within the contemporary postmodern location:
As the site of a multitude of ‘social spaces’ of varying levels of sociality
the city intensely stimulates our emotions and senses, at times to the brink
of sensory overload, but also offers sites and spaces of relief from this
intensity, if only through bounding these experiences in certain spaces and
at certain times. (267)
After the walls of Franco’s gerontocracy fell, Spanish society experimented a ﬂourished
surge, profoundly inﬂuenced by the globalization of mass consumer culture. This
translated into the importation of new concepts and paradigms such as advances in
technology and media communications that altered the notions of time and space, self and

nation. In sum, these sweeping societal transformations consequently resulted in the

197

acceleration and intensity of socially lived experience that created a complex, dense
environment in which identity began to be informed by globalized cultural knowledge; in
partaking in diverse cultures of consumption, subjects forged dynamic multiple

subj ectivities.

Madonna Re-Incarnate: a New Look a New You

In Veo, veo, Gabriela Bustelo interrogates conventional gender paradigms in a
manner that raises the difﬁculty of knowing anything at all, especially when we can
articulate that knowing only through opaque language. As the story begins to unravel,
the spectator witnesses the bouts of paranoia and doubt that plague the protagonist. She
confesses “Cada vez me sentia mas marciana. No tenia claro en quién podia conﬁar y en
quién no” (31). Stemming from the effect of her stalker, Vania feels alien and does not
know whom to trust which extends to her network of ﬁiendships. Given this, Vania
channels her energy into the realm of consumerism whereby she articulates her identity.
In so doing, she removes herself from an absence of power, if not actively empower
herself. From the label on her tube of lipstick “<<Escarlata Oj ala>>” (28) to her brand
name clothing attire “Hechter” (39) Vania freely manufactures a multi-textured self
composed of a plethora of elements: the seductive, alluring red lipstick called ‘Wanting
Scarlet’, juxtaposed with the chic but conservative uptown style of Hechter clothing. By
Way Of inscribing her body with commodities that send contrasting messages, each
however, carefully chosen Vania fabricates her desired paradoxical representation. The
conStruction of her hybrid identity is buttressed by her consumption of women’s

magaZines: “Siempre que me daba por comprar las revistillas de turno, acababa con la

198

nostalgia de un futuro en el que yo vivia a lo grande. Como Angelica Huston,
mismamente. Leer, tocar e1 piano y montar a caballo” (47). In the spirit of glamour,
Vania has complete license and freedom to create herself, even if it is fugacious.

In an accelerated world that cannot adequately represent truth claims through
language, consumer goods and images not only offer solace, but also, in the age of
information, are heralded as primary vehicles of communication as evidenced in the
dedicatory page of the novel. Bustelo includes verses ﬁom a popular Lou Reed song “I’ll
be your mirror” (1977) that emphasize the signiﬁcant pervasiveness of material
representation in conjunction with the gaze in consumer society; the chosen verses state:
“I’ll be your mirror. Reﬂect what you are in case you don’t know”. The idea of the
mirror projecting one’s image in totality recalls an important component in Lacan’s
critical reinterpretation of the work of Freud, namely that of the “mirror stage”.
Elaborating upon investigations previously undertaken in the ﬁelds of physiology and
animal psychology, Lacan developed the concept of the “mirror stage”, a period in which
an external portrait of the body (reﬂected in a mirror) yields a germane response; it is
from this elicited response that a mental representation of ‘I’ surges. As Lacan afﬁrms,
the mirror stage is akin to a drama, in which the individual immerse in a tango of self-
forrnation conceives of an aggregate selﬂrood, perceived formerly in fragments. It is also
noted as a phase of development in which the infant experiences feelings of alienation,
stemming from the recognition that it is a separate entity” . The image reﬂected is
recognized to be, at the same time, representative of the self yet different. This split

recognition makes desire and lack ﬁmdamental forces in our lives: lack stemming from

 

7’ Per Lacan, infants begin to pass through this stage around eighteen months, a time when, concurrently,
their ego begins to establish. The process is initiated by way of the look, either looking at their reﬂected
image in a mirror or their mother (does not have to necessarily be a mirror image of their own body).

199

the recognition that the subject is a separate entity from the mother and desire surfacing
from the longing to achieve that previous totality. As Silverman afﬁrms, “the mirror
stage as imaginary mapping, suggesting that it is no more possible to be seen than to see
ourselves without intervention of representation” (107), and consequently, it is “through
this mediation of asks that the masculine and the feminine meet in the most acute, most
intense way” (107). The citing of Reed’s songs “I’ll be your mirror” is not innocuous,
but rather Bustelo alludes to an important moment in self-formation. This occurs when
the subject, upon looking at her reﬂection in a mirror, realizes that the reﬂected
equivalent is the projection of her corporeality into an image, and as a result, recognizes
the margins of her subjectivity: the identiﬁcation of self. In sum, as Bustelo hints in her
dedicatory page, consciousness is not inherent but rather created. The human subject
arrives into this world experimenting a fragmented reality; it is not until the subject
recognizes and accepts an image herself in the rrrirror —- one that provides unity and
stability - that she creates a totalizing notion of her very subjectivity. One potential for
the construction of the conscious remains the consumer realm. Via the consrunption of
particular objects, goods, or people, the subject — through appropriating the good —
merges with the world of the matter, and as such becomes an extension its qualities with
a deﬁned identity. As Laura Oswald states: “The subject of consumption is nothing if
not an actor in search of an identity. . .Lacking a basic core identity, the post-modem
subject constructs itself around the image it projects for others in consumer culture. ‘I am
what you perceive me to be’. Consumption enables people to change hats as the occasion
demands”. (49) Taking into consideration the theories of Lacan through the optic of

Consumption, the subject vacillates in the attempt to locate a ﬁxed identity, to make

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herself stable. This achievement is contingent upon positioning ourselves into the
discourse of the image in the mirror: The discourse, or signifying system, is that which
endows meaning to the signiﬁer, or material good; the mélange of images that we
interplay with daily is embedded in the power dynamics of the societies in which we live.
Within this dance, the subject ﬁnds personal meaning from the signiﬁer and then may
stabilize herself and her identity, albeit ﬂeetingly.

What characterizes consumption as a mode of signiﬁcance is that these goods or
commodities no longer exist in and of themselves, but circulate as signs within a system
of differences, or as Baudrillard states “the object is no longer referred to in relation to a
speciﬁc utility, but as a collection of objects in their total meaning” (Baudrillard,
Simulacra and Simulation 31). Thus it is within this differential sign-value that the
commodity in question has any meaning at all; cultural commodities structure meaning
for the consumer in speciﬁc contexts and constitute the horizon of possibilities within
which the consumer can structure meaning for herself. In the context of Vania, preparing
to go out is not just a matter of collecting pertinent belongings such as keys, purse, etc.,
rather it entails the complex process of self fabrication, which includes the conversion of
her body into a legible text. On one occasion Vania notes “Me acicalé a lo Versace con
vaqueros y en vista de que no tenia espejo, decidi it do cara lavada y recién peina” (93).
Her clothing choice is not innocent; rather as Alison Lurie observes in her book El
lenguaje de la ropa:

Incluso cuando no decirnos nada, nuestra ropa habla a voces a cualquiera
que nos ve. Llevar lo mismo que todo el mundo no es una soluciOn a1

problema, no mas que lo seria decir lo rrrisrno que dice todo el mundo.

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Podemos mentir en el lenguaje de la vestimenta, o intentar decir la verdad;

pero a menos que estemos desnudos y calvos es imposible guardar e1

silencio. (2)
As manifest in her clothing, her body text incamates a hybrid mixture of aesthetics.
While sporting imported Versace jeans, she ironically maintains the traditional Spanish
“cara lavada y recién peina”. The protagonist sends a clear message that she is above
trying to look good, above conforming to social expectations. It can be said that she is a
contradiction of the aesthetic she embodies: a dissonant that ﬂaunts femininity yet
transgresses these regulations going sans coiffure and makeup. One of the most salient
characteristics of visual culture in postmodernity is the disassemblage and heteroglossia
of tastes and attitudes regarding attire: “the wide range and quality of fabrics, trims,
colors, silhouettes, and particularly stylistic modes as well as the broad array of
accessories spanning the spectrum from footwear and headdress to jewelry and hair style
display an unprecedented openness and fragmentation in the history of post-
Enlightenment Western clothing conventions” (Leitch 111). Clothing, as a form of
dress, has the ability to communicate for the masses and the individual that which they
carmot express verbally and that which they would like to make obvious about
themselves. Body dressing, furthermore, is imbricated in the dynamics of cultural
capital; it mediates between patriarchal norms and domination as well as serves as a
prescription for conformity yet also resistance, as illustrated in the aforementioned
description of Vania’s attire. In assuming a particular fad or aesthetic, one also is
subsumed within a speciﬁc milieu; however, identity formation as manifest through

clothes is a function of multiple subject positions that cohere in contradiction.

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The formation of identity, in conjunction with fashion, does not erect itself in a
vacuum, but rather it is a process that is embedded in the mirroring effects afforded by
other spectators. In a world of gazing and being gazed upon, body attire systematically
submits to inscription and re-inscription vis-a-vis complex operations of social
interaction. The body is dressed and its spectacle submitted to critical cultural
inventories and praxis, and as a result subjectivity unfolds in a play of images. The
dialogue between the material reahn and spectator initiates with the fascination of look or
the gaze. According to Patrizia Calefato: “la mirada perrnite acceder a situaciones
irreversibles, marca e1 paso hacia un estado en que todo parece haberse cumplido. Mirar
es, a la vez, modiﬁcar el mundo y a los otros que se miran, y ser modiﬁcado por la
mirada de los otros” (129). Looking, then, is not simply an innocent action, but rather a
process mediated by our own experiences, thoughts, and cultural knowledge. In the
context of the novel, it is signiﬁcant to note that Vania had always preferred to be the
“mirona”(93), in possession of the gaze and by association, power, rather than the
“mirada” (93), a traditional female position historically relegated as passive.
Nevertheless, along her journey, the protagonist problematizes this binary structure of
One and Other through her subversion — intimately linked to her active self-formation —
of the paradox. In her meditation on body dressing Iris Marion Young sustains: “female
imagination has liberating possibilities. . .The unreal that wells up through imagination
always creates the space for a negation of what is, and thus the possibility of alternatives”
(209). In this vein, we can consider such liberatory phenomena as resistance of styles,
voguing, parody, masquerade, and anti-hegemonic dress. Thus, fashion serves as an

instrument to aid and abet gender constraint and display Vania’s assertiveness.

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Fashion and its coding of the body is not a new concept. It has served to mark
and textualize the bodies of both the masculine and the feminine for centuries according
to supposedly organic gender prescriptions. Nevertheless, it may be considered in a
positive light due to the ability to select and confect one’s selfhood. Fashion codes and
denotes that which Vania is: her subject. As a system of signs, body dressing constitutes
a popular cultural form of communication, capable of reproducing and reinventing itself.
The value of Vania’s fashion consumption lies not in the usage of the clothes but rather in
their highly effective manner of writing the body so that the body enters into the realm of
circulation as currency. Similar to music, fashion articulates how an individual perceives
space, time and her body. According to Calefato, “Lo que tienen en comr'rn el lenguaje
del cuerpo revestido y el lenguaje musical, de forma peculiar, es el elemento de
sensorialidad: traje y musica son formas mediante las cuales el cuerpo parece ‘sentir’ el
mundo circunstante de manera completa y arnpliﬁcada” (175). Hence fashion and music
articulate in a more penetrating and excited mode that which we may know or feel.
Vania’s self illuminates this affectuality evidenced by her selection of body dressing as
well as her transformation through dress. Regularly in the process of altering her bodily
text, her clothes, style, and body images range from evening dresses to bedroom wear and
ﬂashy garb to techno-futuristic fashion. Not infrequently, though, clothing functions
ironically with Vania, for instance the galactic part-woman, part-machinic image she
sports with the lime green lycra dress, a mix between “Star Trek y Barbarella” (113),
paired with “botas blancas de media piema tipo Courréges” (113). It is noteworthy that
her look- a hybrid- is grounded in two North American science ﬁction popular media

references, Barbarella and Star Trek. Ironic in particular, Barbarella is a 1968 Jane

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Fonda camp classic, as it depicts the story of a stunningly beautiful woman charged with
leading a revolution to save planet Earth. Vania is also on a mission: to question and play
with convention. Through the use of strongly sexualized images and the futuristic,
Bustelo re-conceptualizes the notion of woman as sex object. Daniel Harris afﬁrms:

“The futuristic creates its imagery through willful disobedience, an ahnost bratty,
aesthetic misbehavior, rather than through a genuine spirit of inventiveness, of artistic
prescience about the appearance of tomorrow” (129). As Harris conﬁrms, the
employment of the futuristic aesthetic does not portend the creation of a new order, rather
“an ever-clearer sense of the obsolescence of the past which, through a crotchety series of
negations and disavowals, it seeks to cancel out” (129-30). By way of the combination of
feminine consciousness and pleasurable playfulness Bustelo toys with tradition to create

a potentially liberating female subject.

While the clothing Vania consumes reproduces gender conventions, it is also open
to subversion through her usage of irony. That is, it can be described as “campy” in the
aesthetic sense. Susan Sontag in “Notes on Camp” elaborates that camp is located in a
“seriousness that fails” (2) as it is premised on irony, and it prizes style over content.

The trademark of camp is a love of the exaggerated and is the most patent example of the
metaphor: life is a theater, as it responds to the roles one assumes and plays in life.
Moreover, camp can also be employed to satirize; for instance, by presenting people
and/or objects as exaggerated, camp signals and interrogates the proliﬁc stereotypes in
society. To this extent, the look Vania cultivates is not innocuous; her (re)presentation
can be read as “campy”. For example, one occasion, Vania reveals “Para ir a cenar a

Archy queria estar atOmica. Me puse un traje negro de Hechter que consistia en una falda

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stretch y una chaqueta entallada con cremallera y escote en pico. Asi contado no parece
nada del otro mundo, pero con unos zapatos altos causaba sensaciOn” (39). Her choice
in attire is interesting in that the stretch skirt and zippered, ﬁtted coat serve to mold and
shape her body, and consequently her self. To test the impact her body dressing would
have, she consulted with two male ﬁ'iends to solicit their opinion; their response was
what she had hoped to elicit. “Los hombres siempre cambian de comportamiento en
cuanto ven una falda, un tac6n y un trozo de piema. No pueden remediarlo. Perfecto. Se
me quedaron mirando como 5i fuera otra distinta de la que acababa de abrirles la puerta.
Justo lo que yo queria” (39). This example exposes the complexity of gender constraints.
While it appears to reinforce traditional notions of patriarchy, it can also be read as a
parody of the dominant structure. Vania fabricates a highly-sexually charged image, yet
she is not an object. Rather, through the commodiﬁcation of her body, she wields power
over the men, and also parodies supposed, inherent ‘natural’ structures. At the same
time, she produces a subject that conforms in every way to the denigration of content for
style. That is, the two men are portrayed as pitiful, simpletons, incapacitated by the
erotically charged image she wields. Additionally, via the communication of their body
language, she understands the type of power her body as a commodity possesses. I view
her choice of dress as an important investment in subject formation — one which opens up
the potential for Vania and other women to use clothing/fashion for their own purposes
and experience pleasures that are the reverse of dominant ones. Through her fashion
choice, she communicates to her self and the world the pleasure she gleans from
exercising her sexuality. Vania afﬁrms: “Esta noche le tocaba el tumo al vestido verde

lima. Como estaba muy morena, e1 contraste tela con piel era perfecto. Cuando yo

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misma me deseaba, sabia que estaba deseable” (135). This super-feminine ﬁgure deﬁnes
and exceeds the boundaries of what it means to be a Woman; she is an icon meant to be
desired, envied, emulated. Likewise, the protagonist plays off cultural anxieties
surrounding female sexuality with a special zeal, in a manner that represents a direct
attack on hegemonic ideas of women incamating the binary opposition of a Madonna or a
prostitute. It must be noted that some feminists read tight sexual clothing as garments that
set out to discipline and regulate the female body, rendering her docile and subservient
(Bordo, Dworkin); yet Vania is in no way subservient. Consistent with Braidotti’s theory
of becoming-woman and the nomadic ﬁguration, Vania experiences multiple pleasures
derived from fashion and the power it gives to her as seen through shifts in her identity.
Furthermore, she uses this to her advantage within the hegemonic power structure.

As the detective teases out the various intrigues of the conundrum and puzzle
pieces slowly come together vis-a-vis multiple discoveries, the enigma of Vania’s stalker
becomes shrouded in mystery. Pelaez, in conjunction with his friends Federico and
Sarnperio, scour her apartment and car, which prove to be an enormous success as they
expose numerous secret microphones, video cameras placed in the most intimate rooms
of her apartment, and to top it off, multiple two-way mirrors mascarading as walls. As
Vania puts it, her home is “cuaj ada de micros” (60) and as a result of the secret cameras
and two-way mirrors she was observed during “las escenas mas comprometidas que le
pueden ocurrir a alguien en el cuarto de baﬁo, en el dormitorio y en el salén de su casa”
(84). Perhaps the cuhninating point of the inﬁltration of her privacy arrives with the
discovery of the videotapes, revealing extremely vulnerable moments in her day.

Watching the tapes, to validate their footing, Vania remained completely stunned:

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Primera toma. Yo despatarrada en el sofa aim sin aguj eros, desnuda de
cintura para abajo y viendo la tele con cara de zombi. Segunda toma. Yo
en el cuarto de baiio, sentada en el retrete, en plena tarea. Tercera toma.
Yo, en el sofa otra vez, dc tiros largos y con ojos de lunatica, dandome la
paliza total con un tipo trajeado. Cuarta toma. Yo miréndome en el
espejo del cuarto de baffo, haciendo muecas circenses y limpiandome los
oidos con un bastoncillo de algodOn. Quinta toma. Yo, e1 e1 salon otra
vez, hablando sola con gran convencimiento y atizandome vodkas a saco.
Sexta toma. Yo en mi habitacién, guardando a camara rapida un burruﬁo
de ropa en el armario mientras entraba un tio por la puerta. Séptima toma.
Yo con un body negro tipo Dallas, haciendo un despliegue de posturitas
provo encima del taburete de cuarto de baho. Octava toma. Yo
devorando sin piedad sobre mi cama a un elemento que estaba como un
tren. (82)
The camera, as the omnipotent eye, has captured ﬁ'om the mundane and prosaic to the
more spectacular and devious of Vania’s daily activities. Upon watching the different
takes, the protagonist is at once in the position of observing and being observed. Dealing
with the situation, she had to confront herself with a dual identity and two different roles.
This realization — perhaps always known to Vania but never felt so acutely — endows her
with power. That is to say, the way of looking deﬁnes people and things as the subject or
the object, and vacillating between the two positions is a propitious space to describe,
interpret, and re-deﬁne these roles. It is through this experience that the protagonist as

viewer conﬁ'onts herself with the varying identities connected with viewing. The act of

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looking is fundamental to our notion of being. Quoting John Berger “ It is seeing which
establishes our place in the surrounding world” (5). Watching the video montage,
Vania’s subject enters the reahn of exhibition - a peep show depicting her intimate
moments - as she witnesses her own prohibited pleasure. It is interesting to note that
whether being listened to, video-taped, or watched, Vania’s body converts into a
commodity, an object of masculine desire and an object she creates for her own pleasure.
While the intent can be read to subdue and render passive Vania’s subject, the impact of >
this melee on her lived reality is not that clear-cut.

As Vania’s experiences the insidious invasion of her personal territory, her self
undergoes a transformation vis-a-vis her participation in the consumer realm. From the
inception of the novel, the protagonist reveals to the reader the importance of seeing and
being seen. “Lo fundamental era e1 juego ver-ser visto” (19). An integral part of this
game which mediates communication between the various players is the spectacle; Vania
notes: “Poco a poco habia ido descubriendo una forma completarnente distinta de
relacionarse con 10 real. La imagen. Otro mundo en el que la rapidez y el instante
concreto eran lo que contaba” (64). Unlike the deterministic tendencies associated with
the modern era, in postmodernity identity is malleable and a subject acts as her own
master sculptor. In this way, Vania is in control of her image, not trapped by it; the proof
lies in her ironic and chameleon-like approach to the construction of her subjectivity, her
keen ability to slip into and out of character at will, to defy deﬁnition and keep them

guessing. It is curious that the protagonist cites Madonna, the postmodern material girl

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par excellence, as queen of self-manufactured images". Much like this “campy” global
pop icon, Vania has invented herself to excess as a mutable being and container for a
multiplicity of images: she can be anything. “Eran cerca de las diez de la noche. Puse la
tele y vi en <<Informe Semanal>> un reportaje sobre Madonna, la reina del escandalo
prefabricado. Esa si que sabia montarse bien la vida”. (58-59) Like the global pop star
Madonna, Vania is a multi-talented dazzler that never gets bogged in a ﬁxed mold. In
this type of codiﬁcation, words such as control and power are the equivalents of self-
creating, so as to escape a ﬁxed deﬁnition. It is, then, the interface between material
subjection to hegemonic discourses on beauty and its re-appropriation through
masquerade- as will be elaborated in the following section- that Vania activates her
female subjectivity through erotically charged images, all the while enjoying her own

exhibitionist self-display.

Music, Dance, Drugs, and Female Subjectivity

As John Berger argues in Ways of Seeing, “according to the usage and
conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome —
men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being
looked at” (45). He contends that in European art from the Renaissance and beyond
women were depicted as being “aware of being seen by a [male] spectator” (49).
Furthermore, Berger states that ﬁ'om the seventeenth century, paintings of female nudes
reﬂected the woman’s subjugation to “the owner of both woman and painting” (52), a

submission that, he argues, continues to be depicted present-day in color photography and

 

7’ Throughout her career, Madonna’s fundamental goal has been to attract the viewers’ attention vis-a-vis
pushing the envelope and surprising people. While admitting that she is not the best dancer nor singer, this
star acknowledges that she is not hesitant to go to extremes or make a spectacle.

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other mediums. His theory — grounded in principles of Enlightenment — maintains that
women were and are still “depicted in a different way to men because the ‘ideal’
spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of woman is designed to ﬂatter
him” (64). Gabriela Bustelo in her novel Veo,veo fools around with the traditional
conceptions of the gaze (speciﬁcally within the territory of the movida nightlife), and in
particular utilizes the technique of irony to subvert and parody these antiquated
conventions.

As the story unravels, it becomes patently clear to the reader the pleasure Vania
receives from her deliberate and carefully chosen commodiﬁcation of body and self.
Upon validation that Vania is not suffering ‘neurosis’, the existence of the protagonist is
akin to an exhibition devoted to the extreme state of watching and being watched. Vania
knows that she is under surveillance; not only is she being followed by an unknown but
also within the conﬁnes of her personal space — her home — the placement of the hidden
cameras and video recorders have converted her daily intimate activity into a peep show,
public and visible for others, yet she maintains “Lo que no pensaba hacer era abandonar
mis costumbres” (60). This knowledge propels Vania to experience her life as if it were
a quasi-perfonnance; that is, she channels her energy into consumerism — one of high end
goods - and thus, actively manufactures the type of self that she wants to be peeped on,
both inside and outside of the home. And moreover, not only does Vania experience
intense personal pleasure from the attention she dotes on herself in the process of her
subject formation, but also the production of her very subjectivity serves to reproduce the

mystery of the surveillance gaze.

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In order to unveil the mystery and expose the stalker, detective Pelaez in
conjunction with his cronies propose to follow the protagonist to her regular locales, and
from a distance, observe her interactions within those environments. In this situation,
with the locker-on, the assumption that the gaze is always male and always omnipotent is
questioned. There are numerous instances in the novel in which the woman turns the
gaze on men and still others that challenge the hierarchical positioning of male and
female that the gendered gaze entails. In this vein, the gaze on the part of Vania can
serve to destabilize the spectator as well as confer mastery to the protagonist over her
own subject formation. Although under constant surveillance by known and unknown
individuals, the space of the “movida” nightlife affords Vania a distinct opportunity to
freely create her self — a subject mediated by material goods, assemblage of the club, and
drugs. That is, knowingly full well she is being observed, the protagonist does not allow
the mysterious stalker nor her paranoia to control, manipulate, or render docile her
subjectivity. Instead, through her assertion of power and female sexuality she can be
seen as the embodiment of the subversive nomad. Through the mode in which she
experiences this location, “very much an encounter of mind and body” (Malbon 270), the
protagonist forges a space and identity of her own. According to Bauman, in our
postmodern era, physical social spaces are constructed so ‘that meetings which are not
actively sought may be avoided’ (15 7). This suggests that public locations are
denominated as spaces to pass through rather than interact among. “Potential meetings
become ‘mismeetings’ in which the point is to see whilst pretending that one is not
looking — scrutiny disguised as indifference” (Malbon 267). The suffocating abundance

of different bodies and faces in the city intensiﬁes feelings of unease, experienced as

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citizens negotiate various social territories. To manage these feelings of otherness, a
number of strategies are utilized, one being what Simmel denominates the ‘blasé
outlook’, which entails projecting an indifference, which paradoxically is another form of
sociality. Yet, as witnessed vis-a-vis the socially lived experience of our protagonist,
these tactics which provide temporal relief from these ‘civilising inﬂuences’ (Malbon
269) or ‘ceremonial codes’ (Goffrnan 55) are re-directed as she seeks on a temporal and
spatial level enjoyment from experiences of close proximity to others in a more positive
and liberating form than she experiences in the streets. While exposed social spaces offer
a thrill to those negotiating its location, according to Malbon this excitement is coupled
with a feeling of ease or belonging, “others are driven by the urge to feel at ease in space,
even if only ﬂeetingly” (269). This desire to express afﬁnity with a community even
among strangers — to identify with a place, people, and social circumstances, can be read
as ﬁrndarnental to the experience of social situations. There exists many possibilities
where this unity and becoming might be experienced, and the underground nightlife of
the movida, as seen through the actions of the protagonist, can be considered one of these
territories.

Through participating and consuming this underground environment, Vania feels
empowered to pursue a distinctive lifestyle and develop an autonomous sense of self.
Regarding a particular venue, Pacha, that she frequents the protagonist expounds on the
relationship of her self to the other bodies and obj ects-in-use.

Paché, segr’rn se entraba por la puerta después de pasar por el guardarropa,
estaba dividido en dos sectores. El lado de la derecha era donde se

instalaban los nihos bien de toda la vida, con botella a su nombre y

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apellidos rimbombantes como Funster y Funiga. Y el lado izquierdo, e1
auténtico, era donde iba 1a ralea de incondicionales que todas las noches se
ponian exactamente en el mismo sitio y pedian exactamente la misma
copa. Mi esquina preferida estaba en un extremo de la zona auténtica,
enfrente de la cabina de pinchas. Durante un tiempo habia cogido la
costumbre de ir a Pacha sirnplemente a pensar con mr'rsica a tom. (32)
Vania’s testimony underlines the importance of location or proxemics in connection with
the concept of self-formation or as Braidotti states becoming-woman. The right hand
side of Pacha, populated by a yuppiﬁed crowd, chose libations that reﬂected their cultural
capital. On the other hand, the left side of Pacha was inhabited by customers that
regularly frequented the club. The most authentic and valid space of Pacha, nevertheless,
was the space she herself occupied, in front of the DJ booth. It is interesting to note that
the territory she denominates as her own is one of high-proﬁle and, above all, authentic;
in club lingo, the DJ - synonymous with god — garners deity-like worship, as this person
architects the sonic structure of the bar milieu, infusing the music with passion that
translates to emotive ripples, caressing and working upon each patron. Her authentic
space, regardless of venue, though, is one that maintains unobstructed visibility, placing
her in a position of power, “controlando perfectamente quién entraba y salia” (107).
Through the appropriation of that space as her own, she opens up a territory for the
resistance of control and actively experiences libidinal pleasure. While the bar or club
scene is predominantly a masculine site of experience - from levels of musical
production, to drug distribution, proﬁt making, and the appropriation of the male gaze -

this location, the underground world of Pacha, can be read not only as a space of auto-

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erotic pleasure but also can be read as a challenge to heterosexual masculinity’s
traditional centrality. This is achieved via the deconstruction of the traditional notion of
the uniﬁed subject with ﬁnite ego boundaries. Within this ambience, there are many
elements and praxis working to erase the bodily frontiers: dancing, ornamentation,
lighting, music, and drugs. The experiences of the protagonist demonstrate the various
ways of constituting identities that refuse stability, that remain ﬂuid, and that resist
deﬁnition. As Susan Rubin Suleiman signals, women must surpass the notion of
validation of historically suppressed values and instead, elaborating upon Derrida’s idea
of “incalculable choreographies” (Derrida 76), opt for a “dizzying accumulation of
narratives” (Suleiman 24) to capture the ﬂuidity inherent in postmodern female
subjectivity. This tendency on the part of Vania becomes increasingly pronounced after
the realization of the existence of a stalker. Instead of waging war on feminine sexuality
and objectiﬁcation, she strategically uses her body to challenge the ﬁxed, stable notions
of gender. According to Malbon, the atmosphere of a club is a space:
[. . .] of identiﬁcation, with its rituals and customs, its intensive sociality,
its overwhehningly sensuous and emotional ethos, its re-citing and re-
fusing of musical histories, boundaries and cultures and its seeming
dislocation from the binds of a life which appears increasingly uncertain,
the club situation offers clubbers opportunities to inscribe their own
creativities upon a shared space, to create a space of their own making of
which they are also the consumers. (279)
In the context of Vania, there is more of the self in this new vocabulary of femininity that

translates to more self-esteem, and more autonomy; her self becomes unbound and

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released from the supposedly natural, organic notion of Woman. There is also a
redeﬁnition of the female self that is endlessly constructed and re-constructed. No longer
lavishing her attention on a male ﬁgure, the protagonist, Vania, is free to lavish attention
on herself and is aided in doing so by the world of consumer goods, which I view as
consistent with the theorist of sexual difference Rosi Braidotti’s desire to create positive
categories for becoming-woman.

The nocturnal world Bustelo depicts in her novel can be said to encourage a
particular subjectivity through a medley of accoutrements that operate molding and
texturizing one’s subj ecthood. In his essay “Techniques of the Body”, Marcel Mauss
elaborates upon the learning the body undergoes as it acquires certain techniques speciﬁc
to the culture in which it is inscribed; he delineates the mode in which the reproduction of
the spatial reahn is manifest through the corporeal, arguing for the mimetic nature of the
transmission of techniques from one body to another. He contends: “The individual
borrows the series of movements of which he is composed from the action executed in
front of him, or with him, by others” (459). The sort of apprenticeship he names can be
exempliﬁed in Vania’s experience of movement within the club; in time, her body
meshes with the location so that the very accoutrements become extensions of her body,
blurring the frontier between ﬂesh and material good (F uat F irat 96). This notion
debunks the Cartesian theory of a division among objects and subjects into distinct units;
this re-sigrriﬁcation highlights a new relationship, as well as clouds the distinction,
between space and self. Foucault, likewise, elaborates upon a similar theory of corporeal
apprenticeship in which he discusses the positive power endowed in a body in the

contemporary setting. That is to say, whereby power in former regimes functioned via

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the inﬂiction of power upon the corporeal, denying the body, and in some cases, taking
life, his notion of body-power focuses on molding the material in accord with society,
sans denial. While not believing in the existence of a stable human nature, Foucault
postulated that via power, one may shape the body and its dispositions in the desired
manner. For Foucault the body is not a self-contained system, rather “The body is broken
down by a great many distinct regimes; it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest
and holidays; it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws; it
constructs resistances. (Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 153).
In this context, “. . .the body is. . .directly involved in the political ﬁeld; power relations
have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry
out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs...” (Discipline and Punishment: the Birth
of the Prison 25). Furthermore, he maintains that the mastery we enjoy over our own
bodies and the awareness, the self-consciousness, which reﬂexively circuits us back to
them are each effects of the investment on our bodies by power:
Mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired only through
the effect of an investment of power in the body; gymnastics, exercises,
muscle building, gloriﬁcation of the body beautiful. All of this belongs to
the pathway leading to the desire of one’s own body, by way of the
insistent, persistent, meticulous work of power on the bodies of children or
soldiers, the healthy bodies. But once power produces this effect, there
inevitably emerge corresponding claims and afﬁrmations, those of one’s
own body against power, of health against the economic system, of

pleasure against the moral norms of sexuality, marriage, decency.

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Suddenly what had made power strong becomes used to attack it. Power,
after investing itself in the body, ﬁnds itself exposed to counter-attack by
the same body. (Power/Knowledge 56)
Within this underground world of clubbing the feminine self is no longer a passive neatly
bounded entity, rather it is the primary target to be worked, relished, chemically enhanced
and taken higher, and in Foucauldian terms, ‘produced’. Participation and enjoyment are
experienced in terms of connections between the self and others and between the self and
the machine or technology. Describing the scene of one of her frequented venues, Vania
observes:
Pacha estaba en plena apoteosis. Era uno de esos domingos en que la
concurrencia habia decidido curarse la resaca en la calle. Estaba todo
dios. Modemos y auténticos conviviendo en fratemidad. Me aposenté
con Tono, que me invité a una serie de rayas mas. Ben estaba también,
con el Manel famoso, dando conversacién a diestro y siniestro, como 5i
Pacha fuera el salén de su casa. A mi lo que mas me apetecia era
moverme. Sali a la pista y me olvidé del mundo, entrando en ese estado
de letargo eléctrico que es la danza. Irnitar chiclosamente e1 ritrno de una
cancién es dejar que el alma, savia sabia, nos recorra por dentro, de arriba
abajo, hasta la punta de los dedos. (75-76)
Located within the territory of the nocturnal, Vania undergoes a conversion to the
malleable and the sociable through the almost addictive pleasure of dance by which she
enters into a different relationship with her own body, one which is more tactile and more

sensuous. Through her testimony, it becomes patent the connection among her self,

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drugs, and music. Along the lines of a sybaritic encounter, the experiences within this
location can be read “. . .as a performance, where the lights (or darkness), the sounds, the I
possible use of drugs, the practices (and rituals) of dancing and the proximity of the
‘audience’ all add to its intensity” (Malbon 271). In this context, as she confesses, her
experience within this realm is intimately dependent upon aural stimulation; the music
works upon the space of Pacha and her body intertwining the two via emotional infusion
and re-creating the self and ambience for her consumption. She afﬁrms:
La musica era muy instrumentada, envolvente como un tune] musgoso.
<<Vamos hacia el misterio. Déjate llevar. No hay mejor lugar. Lo sé>>
Hay canciones que se oyen una vez y se recuerdan siempre. A mi me
ocurrid con aquella. Me parecia una especie de mensaje de los cielos,
codiﬁcado y 5610 entendible para mi. El hilo invisible de melodia, letra y
voz me producia ese cosquilleo eléctrico en la nuca que me paralizaba de
puro placer. (72)
This example demonstrates the transformation that transpires by way of the conjugation
of elements. Placing at the forefront female sexuality, the imagery utilized by the
protagonist ‘tr'mel musgoso’ to describe how the music affects her self-formation can be
interpreted as a vaginal womb, from which Vania experiences not so much transcendental
rebirth but a regeneration of the multiplicity of her subject. The music, the heart and
motor of the club, articulates a language that engenders a spiral sensation of libidinal
pleasure that continues ascending, opening up a fresh space for the exploration of new
forms of feminine identity and pleasure. In other instances, Vania reveals the rush she

receives from the musical vibes; this exciting, driving force channels her soul, body, and

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mind into new directions. Interestingly, though, the majority of music that she consumes
— be it in the club or elsewhere - is imported North American and British hits such as
“Crazy River” (133), “Change My Mind” (134), “Cigarette of a Single Man” (135), and
“Little Red Corvette” (32). Likewise, some of her favorite artists are also imported chart
toppers: the Mamas and the Papas, Prince, Teddy Pendergrass, Steve Miller, and the
Rolling Stones; this selection unveils not only the proliferation of globalization of
cultures within Spain, but also how individual identity is to a much less extent nationally
grounded, rather nurtured through a ﬂuid navigation among cultures. Bustelo agrees
noting: “La mr'rsica pop nacio en Inglaterra. . .y en Espaﬁa hemos tenido una enorrne
inﬂuencia del pop inglés. En los aﬁos ochenta uno no era ‘modemo’ si no habia ido a
Londres” (Personal Interview 2004). Through consuming global products, Vania also
consumes experiences. With respect to her afﬁnity for music, she admits:
Teniendo un buen punto, poner mr'rsica era un placer. Cada canciOn me
llevaba a otra, guiada unas veces por la melodia, otras por la letra, otras
por los recuerdos, otras por la intrepidez o la curiosidad, como los diyeis
profesionales. Al dej arme llevar, habia un momento en que lograba una
conexidn tan sublime entre un tema y otro, que era como estar creando una
obra propia, arte sobre arte. (134)

As evidenced by her words, there exists a special relationship among music and
its perceiver. The music, much like an artist, works upon the body and retains the ability
to transform and re-create subjectivities. Likewise, her confession highlights another
capability of the sonic architecture: “the total nature of the sound present in some club

experiences can effect the obliteration of the aural outside of the music. This notion of

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‘losing it’ or ‘losing yourself’ appears to be at the heart of many clubbing experiences”
(Malbon 274). Malbon, in his article, highlights that the music affords subjects the
ability to move beyond the laborious burdens of daily existence, and delve into a situation
of “inward emigration” (Goffrnan 69). This is patent in Vania’s confession regarding the
grip music possesses on her. “Yo pongo una cancién de Guy Beart y no sé bien qué me
pasa, pero no estoy con todos mi atomos en Madrid, en la calle del Pez. Dejo de ser un
pastiche compacto y me diluyo en no 56 qué lugares remotos del espacio” (134).

Freed from a lifeless imitation or pastiche, which according to J arneson transpires
from radical fragmentation that manifests in “nothing but stylistic diversity and
heterogeneity” (Bertens 114), the music conjoins with Vania’s subject to produce new
narratives that are not merely recycled afﬁliations. In this vein, one can construct a new
identity, albeit temporary, crossing boundaries and opening up new possibilities for
experiencing liberation75 .

In the context of clubbing, dancing - a highly visible reaction to sonic stimulation
- qualiﬁes as the most recognizable bodily practices. Whereas traditionally the act of
dancing has been utilized to showcase the female body for the delectation of the male,
Vania uses it to signify fun, self-indulgence, and non-confornrity. “Bailar es volverse
puro cuerpo, cada nota un hilo de la marioneta en que nos convierte la mr'rsica” (76).

Likewise, her dancing appears to validate her pure physical abandon in the company of

 

7’ It must be noted that Malbon contends that ‘losing oneself” in music affords the possibility for individual
identities to “. . .become (temporarily) less signiﬁcant than the nature of the social situation of which they
are a part” (275). Nevertheless, it is my position, especially in the case of female subjectivity, that this
location offers the female clubber an opportunity to exercise elements of the self such as sexuality and
assertiveness that would be unacceptable outside of this paradigm. The act of ‘losing oneself‘ illustrates
the unbinding of traditional parallels among dancing, drugs, and women. As such, it opens up a new
territory, previously viliﬁed, to explore female subjectivity and pleasure.

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others without requiring the narrative of sex or romance. Describing an evening at
Archy, a venue where her ﬁiend Leo is a DJ, she states:
La pista estaba a tope. Estaba pinchando Leo, y me acerqué a pedirle el
tema ese que dice <<5C6mo puedes bailar cuando nuestras camas estan
ardiendo?>> Venia muy a cuento, o eso pensaba yo. Nos desmadrarnos
bastante. Cuando yo cogia el ritrno de la musica, me daba la sensacién de
ir a1 compas de la mismisirna Tierra Madre. Me dejaba llevar de tal
manera que perdia la nocién de todo. (62-63)
Evanescing and ﬂeeting, her body moves with the beats and her dancing can be read as
an embodied verbalization that she will not be constrained by tensions of daily existence.
Grooving to the alternative beat of Midnight Oil, Vania’s body joins the sonic anti-
establishment protest. The song bears a strong message; it is a plight for the return of
land to the marginalized: the aboriginal people of Australia. In the same way, Vania’s
dancing may be read as a testimony of re-possession. The rhythmic succession of steps
endows Vania with active agency, and the freedom experienced signiﬁes power, energy
and vitality, rather than passivity. Among the crowd, the protagonist partakes
collectively in the ecstatic ﬂuid celebration yet can be read individually, as Vania brings
her own personal history and experience, and therefore incamates her own ‘ﬁguration’ —
in Braidotti’s terrns- of the nomadic subject.
Vania’s experiences - both in and out of the nightclub venue —— are enhanced by
way of the consumption of recreational drugs, employed to intensify the emotive texture
of her experience. The use of chemical enhancements serves to heighten a feeling of

euphoria, bolster self-assurance, delectate and, on a prosaic level, buttress energy. By

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way of its relentless dynamism and perpetual self-invention, the drug experience is
intensely personal as it conjugates sounds, chemicals, the pleasure of dancing and the
intoxication of release on the body and brain. This culture of consumption provides its
consumers with options as opposed to rigid rules. Fundamentally, the pharmacological
enhancements percolate through the consumers’ cortex and tinker with body chemistry,
constructing a reciprocal corroboration between the sonic architecture and the chemically
enhanced brain. Devoid of dogma, this scene is subject to individual interpretation; that
is, it offers a forum to which people can bring narratives about sex, class, or whatever
they desire. In an analogous manner, chemical enhancements play with one’s state of
mind vis-a-vis breaking with the establishment, going off into the uncharted and devising
a plan as one proceeds. Not only is an emotional break made with known reality but also
a physical one. In light of Vania, an array of chemical accompaniments ﬂows through
and acts upon her subject such as “alcohol”, “coca”, “porros”, “éxtasis”, and from time
to time, an “espidbol”. It is signiﬁcant to note how these substances act upon and
produce subjectivity. For instance, one evening Vania was offered “un tiro” (71) from
her DJ friend Leo; latter graciously accepting his offer she notes “Después de la raya, todo
era nitido. A 105 objetos se les aﬁlaban las aristas, como en un gigantesco cuadro de
Antonio LOpez. Lo real se volvia casi hiriente” (71). Noteworthy again, the comparison
between her experiences and perception and the visual arena: a chemical high akin to a
work of Antonio LOpez, best known for collaging disparate realist vignettes in disjointed
compositions. In consuming, the cocaine erases the ﬁxed bodily borders and un-hinges
Vania’s self to the point that she maintain a dual identiﬁcation: one constrained by

norms and another liberated through subversion. Hence, the use of drugs attests to a

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special time when traditional conventions are deferred, opening up a zone for an
idealized, apex of utopic fancy. With respect to the proliﬁc use of drugs within the space
of the club, Malbon afﬁrms:
In clubbing they ﬁnd a unique blend of pleasures (musical, tactile, sensual,
emotional, sexual, chemical, bodily), a potential for illicit activities, the
stimulation experienced through proximity to difference (and in particular
of being so close to what in other contexts they would regard as
‘strangers’ and thus potentially a ‘danger’) and an escape route (albeit an
ephemeral one) from the rigours and stresses of an ever quicker society
which offers no guarantees and provides few opportunities for the release
of deep seated emotions and desires in close proximity to others. (280)
The consumption of drugs heightens transitorily the sociality within the space of
identiﬁcation. Partaking in the chemical celebration with ﬁiends, Vania identiﬁes her
subject with those contexts and forms of sociality within them. For example, after
meeting up one evening with her ﬁiend Mota, “una asesora de imagen de una agencia de
modelos” (108), she was invited to a series of lines which was carefully balanced with
alcohol: “Pedimos una copa para bajar la raya, luego nos metirnos una raya para subir la
copa, y otro copazo para equilibrar e1 peligroso tentetieso coca-copa” (121). These
rituals not only provide sheer escapism, but also a resistance found through losing your
self, to contrarily ﬁnd your self. Chambers argues that within the space of the club the
dynamics of power are manipulated and re-appropriated; reality is exploited and
consequently “produces an unexpected, sometimes magical, space. . .It is dwelling in this

mutable space, inhabiting its languages, cultivating and building on them and thereby

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transforming them into particular places, that engenders our very sense of existence and
discloses its possibilities” (I 6). To partake in these codes — dancing, pharmaceutical
enhancements, sonic narratives - Vania journeys across experiences and erases the notion
of ﬁnite limits. She manifests the nomadic ﬁguration via the generation of alternative
values and subsequently, an alternative self, as she encounters the notion of home - a
physical, emotional and psychical space — through her direct participation in cultures of

consumption, contingencies for the appropriation of the female subject.

Now you see me, now you don’t! Re-appropriation of the Gaze

As indicated in the title, the motif of the eye and its gaze proliferates throughout
the novel Veo,veo. The term gaze is complex. To begin with, it refers to the act of
looking or staring with desire; however, through the optic of psychoanalysis, it
characterizes not only the act but also the viewing relationship within speciﬁc social
circumstances. Both the symbolic and literal attention to the ocular function and the
ubiquity of the gaze underlines the complexity and instability of seeing. Within this
context, the protagonist critiques identity-based politics as the method for achieving
female emancipation. She exposes and de-rationalizes the social power systems that
construct norms regarding the organic gender identities of men and women as well as the
logic of heterosexuality. As Butler suggests, through subversion of identity, the
constructs of the continuity among sex, gender, and desire will destroy its normative
status and allow “cultural conﬁgurations of sex and gender to proliferate” (Butler 190)
and become knowable rather than deviant. Due to the fact that Vania parodies traditional

female stereotypes and adopts at will identities that contradict the notion of a uniﬁed

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female subject, she exposes Butler’s concept of the potential for a ‘variable construction
of identity’ beyond the conventional binary oppositions. Furthermore, she elucidates the
notion that women are not restricted to one ﬁxed identity, rather there exists a range of
possibilities. Indeed, Vania has demonstrated ﬂuidity and ambiguity in the negotiation of
her identity -— notably in chapter 43 entitled “Fiarnbre y Niu Look”. This chapter opens
with an inventory of the detective’s leg-work. Upon relaying a major discovery -— not
only did one of her stalkers, ‘Bigotes’, mysteriously die in a hotel room the night before,
but also the detective’s side-kick was able to slyly remove a bag of video tapes from that
room after his death — the protagonist delves deeper into her contemplation of the gaze.
This breakthrough also determines their next course of action, “Seguir con la misma
técnica, usarla a usted como anzuelo a ver qué peces pican” (117) as neither the detective
nor the protagonist desired to speak with the police regarding the issue. The protagonist
greets this proposal with both relief and slight excitement, as it channels her into the
consumption realm. She reveals, “Decidi no pensar en peligros pistoleros y concentrarme
en el atavio para la ocasién. De la ropa nueva, elegi el vestido rojo, el mas cantoso, para
ponerme. Si se va de anzuelo por la vida, se va de anzuelo por la vida” (117). As the
testimony exposes, her paranoia is displaced by the opportunity to freely create her self
vis-a-vis the material world. It can be said that through her consumption choices, the
emotive, red dress, she manufactures a very particular commodity, the femme fatale, and
recognizes the implications of this choice - that she is bait. To complete the package, she
carefully chooses her perfume Chanel Cristalle: “Un buen perfume es un buen embozo.
Ademas, segr’rn cual se elija, las noches funcionan de una manera 0 de otra. Y Cristalle,

como todos los perfumes Chanel, es un chiticalla temerario” (117). Indeed, Vania

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carefully crafts her subject-formation choosing not only high-end products, but also those
that architect an intense, sexually charged image, yet not a victim. In overplaying her
feminine identity, the protagonist places at the forefront a masquerade, which through its
expression of excessive femininity goes against the grain of traditional conventions.
Judith Butler postulates that if the gender sequences of man and woman are ﬁctive
constructs — that is, “Socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” (23) —
“gender as substance, the viability of man and woman as nouns, is called into question by
the dissonant play of attributes that fail to conform to sequential or causal models of
intelligibility” (32). In this vein, gender ceases to function as a noun; it is performative
“Gender is always 3 doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist
the deed. . .There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is
perfonnatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results”76 (3 3).
The masquerade is, then, a type of expression that threatens the symbolic order:
“watching a woman demonstrate the representation of a woman’s body” (Bovenschen
129). Corresponding with the representation of the femme fatale, this species of
masquerade is deemed by the masculine economy as contrary to virtue. Montrelay
elaborates: “It is this evil which scandalizes whenever woman plays out her sex in order
to evade the word and the law. Each time she subverts a law or a word which relies on
the predominantly masculine structure of the look” (93). Thus, the masquerade
problematizes the symbolic order of the gaze via re-appropriating woman and endowing

the sign with multiple narratives.

 

7” In this instance Butler is drawing upon theories utilized by Nietzsche that ‘there is no “being” behind
doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely a ﬁction added to the deed — the deed is everything’.

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After actively composing her self vis-a-vis a myriad of material goods in order to
perform as ‘bait’, Vania decided that she wanted to try something different, “La verdad es
que no me apetecia nada triscarme los bares sola en plan pidiendo guerra. De repente se
me ocurrio una idea” (117). She proposed that they go together, instead of her going
alone and him observing from a distance. The only way he would accept this plan was
under the condition of disguising their identity, so as to not jeopardize the stake-out.
Pelaez disguises himself with “una barba falsa y unas gafas” (118), meanwhile Vania
decides that she prefers a disguise that would allow her to know “cémo se porta un tio si
no sabe que yo estoy delante” (118). The process of converting to “otra” (118) also
requires the assemblage of carefully chosen material goods. This conversion entails:

una peluca castafia con rizos y me la puse encima de mi espesa melena
negra. Me quité el vestido y lo sustitui por un traje de chaqueta de mi
abuela con unos zapatos bajos. Me pinté mucho y mal, coronandolo todo
con unas gafas alargadas de cristales ahurnados lilaceos. (118)
The results of this performance were quite dramatic. Through her fabrication of a distinct
identity Vania highlights the instability of supposedly organic yet contrived notions of
gender. As Butler argues, the imitation of gender exposes “the imitative structure of
gender itself — as well as its contingency” (175). Moreover, the manner in which Vania
parodies gender, is in itself a parody of that which is natural and original. As a result of
gender perfonnativity, there is “subversive laughter” (186) “in the realization that all
along the original was derived” (176). The displacement of identities on Vania’s behalf
highlights a “ﬂuidity of identities that is open to resigniﬁcation and recontextualisation”

(176).

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It is interesting to note that depending upon the image she actively constructs,
Vania’s relationship with the bodies and objects-in-use differs. For instance, in
consuming the necessary accoutrements to perform the identity of the older, provincial
woman, Vania noticed that not only was she not an object of the gaze but rather she
appeared invisible to people that identiﬁed with her other packaged identity. She
comments to herself:

Lo divertido era que Leo no 5610 no miraba hacia nosotros, sino que

miraba a través de nosotros cuando queria concentrarse en algr'rn farnoso

ﬁmdarnental, como la actriz Sisi Silicon, que estaba con un grupo de gente

de la onda abanico-pendiente-morro-tacén. E1 luk que F edor Larnodorra

exportaba bien (1 19)77
In light of her impersonation, she highlights the commodiﬁcation of the female image, as
well as the consequence of a less marketable look: invisibility. Not only did she receive
this treatment from her acquaintances, but the entire staff of the establishment, Archy. A
central element to Vania’s subjectivity, though, is the freedom she appropriates to
construct variable and ﬂuid identity constructions. After disguising as a stranger to
ascertain how she would be treated, the protagonist decides to return to the same
establishment after having replaced her disguise with her initial outﬁt, the ‘cantoso’ red
dress. Upon her return to the venue, the dynamics of the sociality of the bar were
distinct. She comments:

Esta vez los de la puerta estuvieron suaves como un guante y en el

restaurante me hicieron toda clase de agasajos. Una vez sentada en la

 

77 The mention of the look that Fedor Larnodorra exports can be read as a take on Pedro Almodévar. The
inclusion of this name is not innocent, but rather it demonstrates the proliﬁc commodiﬁcation of Spanish

culture in the global media market.

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mesa, fumando a lo Sara Montiel en la chaise lonj e, me percaté de que el
brasileﬁo parecia mucho mas animado que antes. Se habia convertido de
repente en el gracioso de su mesa, soltando lindezas a todas las nenas, que
respondian como teclas de piano. Cosa curiosa, con 10 desanimado que se
le veia hace media horita. (120)
With cigarette in hand, exuding eroticism and intrigue, Vania assumes a posture
reminiscent of Sara Montiel, a Spanish ﬁlm icon and Hollywood celebrity who embodied
the aesthetic of glamour”. The overt display of sexuality and the desire for control in
women are typically labeled as unchaste and manipulative by hegemonic narratives. Yet
the actions of Vania deliver these conventional notions back at men by over-emphasizing
her female sexuality. In contrast to being a passive sex object, she communicates her
authority by manipulating the femme fatale image as well as mocking femininity as a
quasi-masquerade. That is, the image she creates and presents wields much power
evidenced by the reactions of the male patrons who behave in a pathetic, silly and
desperate mode. Here, Bustelo’s writing can be seen to mock male power and identity by
reducing gender and sex to the level of fashion and style or camp, as she exposes gender
as something one puts on and takes off at will.
Through her campy attire, Vania manipulates gender codes, and in the process,
unveils the fallacies of these supposedly organic structures. According to Judith Butler,

camp is located at the nucleus of a radical agenda for metarnorphosing consciousness.

 

Among the Hispanic culture, due to her beauty and talent, she was deemed a mythical persona. Terenci
Moix states: “Sara Montiel — nuestra Mae West - representa la inspiracién de un erotismo tranquilizador,
donde la agresividad de la sr'rperhembra viene suavizada tanto por sus extravagancias extemas - vestuario,
fraselogia, simpatia, canciones — como por lo absolutamente incredible de los temas en que reina”
(http://pagina.de/saritisima).

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Due to its ability to satire received ideas, by inverting notions, and by emphasizing the
"unnaturalness" of what the patriarchy believes to be “organic”, camp has a central part to
play in sexual politics. By disrupting notions of the naturalness of gender, camp liberates
one to perform according to desire. In contrast to theories of Butler, Andrew Ross
believes that camp reconciles people to their powerlessness. Ross contends that camp
compensates for failure and a sort of nostalgia for the past. As a result, Ross maintains
that camp is problematic in mass culture because it attempts to prohibit society from
becoming aware of its oppression. Furthermore, he contends that camp is part of the
controlling mechanism of late capitalism. To an extent, participants of camps are
reconciled to their oppression, yet that does mean that they believe it to be “natural”.

This investigation places importance on Butler’s argument as Ross’ theories render the
subject as victim, unable to escape the capitalist cycle. Nevertheless, as Butler argues,
camp has the power to open up dimension after dimension of ambiguity, and furthermore,
lend agency to marginalized subject through the re-appropriation of hegemonic codes and
norms. Camp, then, provides another space or territory within which a subject may not
only access power, but also toy with conventions via the re-appropriation and
transmission of code.

In a variety of modes, the protagonist Vania re-appropriates mechanisms which
have served to control women and their bodies. Aware of her precarious stalker situation,
Vania arrives at the realization that nothing is as it seems and that those surrounding her
possess ulterior motives.

Valco queria usarrne como camaza de reportaje barato, Ortui’to se habia

esnobizado por las buenas, Mota era todo lo contrario de una amiga

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caballerosa, Franny jugaba a la ﬁivolona etérea porque creia que eso
molaba, mi abuela me consideraba una niﬂa a la que hay que proteger
incluso de su propia herencia. Y Ben queria llevarme a1 huerto después de
haberrne torturado lentamente. (110)
In a stupor, these doubts provoke the protagonist to question herself and her
surroundings. Fleshing through experiences entailing the stalker and other dubious
characters in her world, Vania is propelled to challenge the dominant hierarchy that has
been attempting to encroach upon her private domain. “Me levanté y fui a1 cuarto de
baﬁo. Arranqué la sabana que habia clavado delante del espejo. Miré hacia el interior del
mercuric reluciente, como si fuera cuestién de conseguir ver algo en el azogue del
crystal. Lerda. Que tr'r no puedes ver nada. Los que te ven son ellos” (111). When this
attempt at confrontation proves futile, Vania emerges as the ultimate sexual voyeur and
prepares to offer the observing eyes exactly what they want: a soft-pom performance,
only with a twist. “Pues les voy a ensei‘lar cosas. . .Si quieren ver tanto, pues que miren.
No tengo nada de que avergonzarme” (111). And with this declaration, she asserts
control over her body, self, and domain. That is, she looks, and then asks that she be
looked at. The gaze is a concept imbricated in desire and control. Numerous theories,
stemming from ﬁhn studies and art history, have explored the complicated and slippery
power relations that are part and parcel of the act of looking and that of being looked at.
With respect to traditional psychoanalytic theory, Freud pioneered the study of the gaze,
later updated by Lacan who placed the look at the foreﬁ'ont of his approach to how the
individual handles desire (mirror phase). In the 19705, ﬁlm theory expounded upon the

psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan and posited that in ﬁlm, the gaze of the

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spectator upon an object was an implicitly male one, structured by the patriarchal
unconscious, which positioned women as objects in cinema. Derived from Laura
Mulvey’s seminal article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Jonathan Schroeder
elaborates “Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing
representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view”
(208). Studies of spectatorship have focused on the mode in which subjectivities are
constructed via subject positions. Mulvey, in her article, notes how Freud referred to
scopophilia -- the pleasure involved in looking at other people’s bodies as sexual objects,
and further argues that various techniques of cinema facilitate the voyeuristic process of
objectiﬁcation of female characters, declaring that within the patriarchal paradigm
“pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female” (27). That
is, traditionally men are portrayed as controlling, active subjects and consequently treat
women as inert, desirous goods available for male consumption. Nevertheless, while
women may be relegated to the position of sex object, it is never for their pleasure rather
for the “controlling male gaze” (33), which Mulvey distinguishes in two modes:
voyeuristic and fetishistic”. Per Mulvey, the camera functions as a tool of voyeurism
and sadism while disempowering those before its gaze. It is important to note that
contemporary theories of the gaze have made more complex the original model delivered
by the Lacan and Freud. Nevertheless, Mulvey’s article generated considerable

controversy amongst ﬁlm theorists. Many objected to the essentialist discourse of the

 

79 The voyeuristic mode of looking entails a controlling gaze which Mulvey contends bears associations
with sadism, “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt — asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through
punishment or forgiveness” (29). The fetishistic gaze, in contrast, deals with “the substitution of a fetish
object or turning the represented ﬁgure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than
dangerous. This builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in
itself. The erotic instinct is focused on the look alone” (29).

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alignment of passivity with femininity and activity with masculinity. Furthermore, there
was criticism of her failure to account for the female spectator. A fundamental protest
underlying many critical responses has been that Mulvey's argument is essentialist:
spectator and male are treated as homogenous. According to Mulvey, one type of
spectator exists (male) and one masculinity (heterosexual). In response to Mulvey’s
articles, Kaplan and Silverrnan (1980) contended that the gaze may be appropriated by
both male and female subjects. The male is not always the controlling subject nor is the
female always the passive object. Indeed, Mulvey’s theory centers on a unitary spectator
position and fails to acknowledge other readings or possibilities.

Working against the grain, the protagonist, however, is involved in what Teresa
de Lauretis elaborates upon in “Desire in Narrative”, a double-identiﬁcation with both the
passive and active subjects. Within the location of her bathroom, Vania re-creates the
ambience of a soft-pom ﬁlm; she turns on soul music, ﬁlls the bathtub with hot water,
and then begins to undress “de la manera mas provocativa posible” (111). These actions
— through the disruption of the male gaze- establish a rejection of the self-monitoring of
female sexuality, whereby “Men act and women appear” (Berger 47). Instead, Vania
subjects the on—looking male gaze to the scrutiny of her gaze, confronting the camera eye
directly. As Skeggs afﬁrms, “looking at men is treated as something to be blatant and
positive about” (69) as opposed to the traditional dynamics in which “women often avert
their eyes in modesty and submission to the gaze of the male audience” (Van Zoonen
101). Conscious of her gender performance, Vania experiences libidinal pleasure “un
placer especial a1 pensar que estaba desnuda y que alguien me estaba mirando sin tomar

cartas en el asunto” (111). This pleasure becomes heightened “me hacia disfrutar aim

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mas”(112) by the explicit knowledge that she is not alone. Her radicalism lies in the fact
that she consistently interrogates cultural premises of femininity and masculinity and
continues to construct for herself her own version of femininity, highlighting its dynamic
nature. Furthermore, according to Lury, the “projection of the gaze offers women a
passionate return on their investment that supercedes the pleasure they receive as a
potential object of the male gaze” (148). Hence, she utilizes the currency of pornography
to challenge the idea of women as passive sex objects. Here it can be read that Vania
recognizes that she is a sex symbol, and appropriates this position to her advantage.

Not only does Vania challenge the patriarchal discomse vis-a-vis her re-creation
of soft-pom in her bathroom, she parodies the same paradigm manifest in her concern
regarding the validity of her home-made movie. Reﬂecting on her role as the star
performer Vania relates:

Pero ya metida en mi papel de protagonista de mi pelicula, procuraba no
mirar a la camara nunca. No hay cosa que mas jorobe un plano. Esta
escena tenia que salir bien a la primera. Cogi e1 peta de encima del borde
del lavabo y, mierda, me habia dejado e1 mechero fuera. Corten, que
ahora mismo vuelvo. (112)
The ambiguity of the previous scene emphasizes the de-centering of the masculine
economy by way of the gratuitous use of elements such as parody and play. The
customary kinship of power between the object and the voyeuristic male gaze is
destabilized by the portrayal of the (unseen) male lockers-on as leering and pathetic; she
makes it clear that she is being watched and breaches the process of fetishization by

facetiously playing to the eye of the camera. At the same time the portrayal of Vania as a

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porn star is deconstructed at the end of the bath through invoking a parody of the popular
refrain “Si no puedes contra ellos, r'mete a ellos” (112). Moreover, in this scene, Vania
confronts a pernicious stereotype and intends to channel it into a distinct reahn: a space
where the female need not be the object of the patriarchal gaze, where its energy impulses
play and non-sexual pleasureso. Upon ﬁnishing her bath and concomitantly her rendition
of soft-pom, she ironically remarks “Sali de mi fragante concha, una Venus terrena y
dopada. Me puse un camisén 5010 por sentir el tacto de la seda en la piel” (112). Re-
enacting Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Vania stages her own interpretation of the
Renaissance painting depicting a beautiful, modest woman being birthed from a conch
shell; while infused with emotion, she toys with the concept of divine love and
submitting to hierarchies through her drug-induced rendition. Favoring irony and
ambiguity, Vania is an artistic alchemist who is able to blend creativity and controversy
in equal measure so as to entertain herself and out of a desire to toy with the masculine
paradigm.

In chapter 59 “La pipa”, the enigma surrounding the mysterious stalkers who
observe and follow Vania begins to dissipate. Following a series of deaths - one of her
stalkers and Ben Ganza, a former love interest of the protagonist who orchestrated the
game — the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place“. Vania comes to recognize that

the existence of the stalker was real yet imaginary; that is, it was contrived by her former

 

8° Some feminists confuse enjoyment of sexuality with sexual objectiﬁcations. Vania’s enjoyment of her
sexuality can be seen as providing a healthy correction to those feminists who situate women’s abilities to
nurture at the forefront of subjectivity.

8’ A decade earlier, Ben Ganza, dubbed ‘el brasileflo’ and Vania Barcia were passionately in love and quite
content, until oneday things abruptly changed and the relationship ended. Ganza, however, maintained his
unrequited love for the protagonist, observing her and her dalliances from afar — Brazil — planning the day
he would return and enter, once again, into her life. Through a carefully contrived plan, Ben dedicated
himself to observing and controlling every move of Vania’s vis-a-vis the construction of the stalker
operation.

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love interest who had “rma necesidad absolute de saber en todo momento lo que estaba
haciendo aquella muj er” (153). In conjunction with the psychiatrist, dubbed Mickey
Rourke, and detective Pelaez, the bitter Ganza formulated a plan to “acabar con ese libre
albedrio que ella tanto buscaba, en otras palabras, convertirse en amo y seﬁor de cada uno
de sus movirnientos, jugar a ser una forma terrena de ese Dios omnipresente que
posiblemente exista para todo el resto de los seres humanos” (153). Espousing a new
identity, the sexy Brazilian accustomed to having all women who “caian rendidas a sus
pies. . .” (155) did not calculate correctly the manner in which his dubious scheme would
affect Vania’s subjectivity; indeed Ben represented irresistible eye candy for women, that
is “todas las mujeres, menos una” (155). Armed with his grandiose, inferiority driven
contrivance, not only was he was unable to get the girl, but his overabundance of efforts
toward his primary goal — possession of Vania — was thwarted: Vania received much
pleasure from re-appropriating the gaze, parading her self, and delving into the consumer
realm. Clearly, male spectatorship is not without limitations, nor consequences. A key
scene in this chapter indicating the botched plan was her playful peep-show performance.
Armed with a pistol”, Vania enters into the bathroom and decides to give the ever-
present eye a taste of his own medicine, and at the same time, ﬁnalize the boyish
shenanigans: “El ﬁnal. El ﬁnal 10 iban a ver ahora mismo, hombre. Me meti la pistola
en el bolsillo de la bata y fui a1 cuarto de bailo. Me iba a volar la tapa de los sesos
delante de ellos. Ese 5i que iba a ser un buen video, hombre. Suicidio en directo, tios”
(160). Before completing her staged suicide, Vania sets the ambience (bathroom) for her

performance, “un numerito pour monsieur Le Voyeur” (160), by selecting appropriate

 

’2 An element of the contrived plot, the pistol was given to her by Pelaez for protection against the
supposed stalkers.

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music: The End by the Doors. Her choice of music is not innocent; with its entrancing
sound, chilling imagery, and Oedipal ﬁrry, the melody revolves around the theme of
journey, both physical and emotional”. Opening with revelations of incumbent
instability and ending with death, the song expresses a profound desire and search for
freedom, symbolically realized at the close, depicted in these following verses: “It hurts
to set you free / But you’ll never follow me / The end of laughter and soft lies / The end
of the nights we tried to die” (The End). The consumption of this particular song,
embedded with the Oedipal section, is subversive as it serves as a metaphor of arriving at
the truth and breaking free of the structure of ideas enforced and instilled by the dominant
paradigm. Even more dissonant, though, is her manipulation of the codes. After
assembling the accoutrements, Vania exchanges her bathrobe for a towel and begins her
seduction “me lo monté de peep-show, jugueteando con una toalla. Ahora lo ves, ahora
no lo ves. COmo lo ves”(160). She continued her montage, parading like a Playboy
Bunny Girl and then while taking out her pistol, changes her mind on the intended
recipient of the bullet. “Giré de golpe, poniéndome cara a1 espejo, y sujetando la pistola
con las dos manos, disparé hacia el mercuric, que clin-clin-clin se hizo aﬁicos dejando el
descubierto el espacio negro que habia a1 otro lado” (160). Peering through the hole in
the wall, the body that lay on the ﬂoor belonged to her detective, Pelaez. Without panic
or much emotion, Vania returned to her side Of the two-way mirror and ironically felt
relieved and also grateful that she could consume: “Tenia caballo” (160) and “la botella

de Dewar’s” (160). This example highlights the complexity of spectatorship. The notion

 

8’ The song contains a stanza that came about after Jim Morrison had originally written and completed the
song. Steeped in Oedipal references, this stanza reads: “He went into the room where his/. . ..sister
lived/And then he paid a visit to his brother/And then he walked on down the lull/And he came to a
door/And he looked inside/Father?/Yes, son?/I want to kill you/ Mother, I want to fuck you” . (Doors.
”The En ”, The End. 1967).

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of Peeping Tom literalizes the idea that the camera function as a weapon of male gaze.
Traditionally, the spectator was perceived to wield more power than the object of the
gaze, the landscape of images in Bustelo’s novel demonstrates that this is not always the
case. Like a contemporary re-incamation of the Lady Godiva myth, Vania utilizes her
charm and sex appeal to inﬂuence the behavior of others, as well as work to her
advantage; like the legendary Peeping Tom, Pelaez is blinded, Ganza, the modern re-
incarnation of Leofric, gets burned and she regenerates and carries on“.

Patriarchal society considers there to be one sex — the masculine — that remains at
the forefront. The Other as Irigaray postulates is the feminine, positioned as the opposite
of men: “They’ve left us only lacks, deﬁciencies, to designate ourselves. They’ve left us
their negative(s)” (The Sex Which Is Not One 207). Male domination is systemic and
consequently, women’s worth is their “use-value” for men and they are treated as
commodities (Irigaray 31), which is illustrated by the games and strategies of the stalkers.
In accord with Irigaray’s tenets, Vania escapes gender oppression by way of her
subversion of the hierarchical framework. That is, via the invention of her own strategies
and language, she expresses and realizes her desires that do not necessarily coincide with
the norms dictated by the masculine economy: she holds her own, does not render herself

passive, and most importantly, thinks for herself.

 

8’ While many versions of the Godiva legend exist, most historians accord that she was an Anglo-Saxon
woman that lived during the period 1040-1080A.D. and was married to Leofric, Earl of Mercia. A woman
inspired by arts and social justice, she had deep hopes to aid the poor townspeople. This became increasing
difﬁcult as her husband, Leofric, began imposing broad taxes on society on goods ranging from food to
manure. Realizing the impoverishment already plaguing the villagers, Godiva moved her art interests to
the back seat while she patronized important considerations such as water and basic supplies. After much
haranguing, Leofric agreed to reduce the taxes upon one condition: Godiva had to offer the villagers an
example of artistic and glorious beauty by riding a horse naked one late August afternoon through the
market of the town from one end to the other, with the villagers present. Upon her return, she would be
granted the tax relief. Expecting his wife to withdraw, Leofric was shocked when she agreed. As the
legend goes, she corrunanded the common folk to turn their heads as she pass; a tailor named Tom
disobeyed her command and after peeking at her, was miraculously struck blind. The justly punished
voyeur was the original “Peeping Tom”.

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Conclusions:

“Feminist women have a long history of dancing through a variety of potential lethal

mine-ﬁelds in their pursuit of socio-symbolic justice”,
Braidotti, www.let.uu.nl/womens_studies/rosi/cyberfem.htm
With the advent of the age of information, corrununications technologies have

accelerated, cultures have become globalized, and consumption has become an outlet
through which citizens, as consumers, may shape and mold identities. As evidenced
through the multiplicity of representations of the protagonist, the realm of consumption
can potentially offer new areas of authority and expertise, and a new sense of consumer
right. One of the consequences of these developments has been a heightened awareness
of entitlement outside the sphere of consumption. In light of this, the reahn of
consumption is understood in two dimensions: as a space in which to negotiate and resist
the inert, absent feminine identity, as assigned through sex roles, and furthermore as the
ongoing process of the creation of identity that embodies the nomadic subject. In Vania’s
situation in Veo, veo, the cultures of consumption — fashion, music, drugs, and the gaze-
provide a basis for becoming-woman as these arising cultures afford a libidinal return on
her investment that is experienced as liberating and is seen as positive in feminist terms.
Her actions highlight the social construction of gender codes in fashion, as they operate
against the conservative view that gender is biologically constructed. Likewise, her overt
sexual behavior deﬁes the patriarchal double standard in which women are the objects of
sexual desire but only heterosexual men are permitted to express desire. In this vein, she
makes the process of sexual objectiﬁcation of women visible by producing it in an
exaggerated and comic form. Vania shamelessly packages and repackages herself, and in

the process presents a vision of freedom, a daring to transgress sexist boundaries and a

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presentation of a complex, invigorating, evolving subject. Her life peppered with
extreme outcomes and mixed results, is not free from reactionary throwbacks and
constricting hegemonic conventions, yet through adoption of complex and contradictory
codes, she embodies new types of creativity and unveils spaces for the liberation of

female subjectivity.

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Chapter V: Alivio rdpido: Traversing the Techno Terrain to the Multinational

Cultural Context

Journalist and author Silvia Grijalba was born in Madrid, and shortly afterward
re-located to the southern Spanish city of Torremolinos. From a very tender age, the
world of music attracted this author, such that while as a student at secondary school, she
collaborated with a fanzine titled Imdgenes alteradas. While this was a small-scale
project with very limited dissemination that she created with a few of her friends in
Malaga, her participation in this endeavor is neverthesless noteworthy. There is a double
signiﬁcance: it planted the seed for her future career in journalism and gave her a reason
to interact and dialogue with her musical idols. After nurturing her passion for writing
via the fanzine, Grijalba traveled to Madrid to begin a degree in journalism at the
Universidad Complutense. Aside from the knowledge imparted at the University, her
writing has also been inﬂuenced by the work of the Canadian writer Douglas Coupland.
In 1989, with the advent of the newspaper El Mundo, Silvia Grij alba initiated her
professional career as a journalist for a literature column. Within six months she was
contracted by the same newspaper to collaborate on musical reviews, projects, and
interviews ranging from rock-and roll to punk and techno variations. Since that time,
Grij alba has been a regular columnist for El Mundo and its supplement La Luna, only
taking leave of absence to write her ﬁrst novel, Alivio rdpido (2002). Aside from her post
with the periodical, Grij alba also writes columns for Glamour, Vogue, Rolling Stones,
Marie Claire, and MTV Magazine, while also giving seminars on electronic music in

GijOn, Alicante, the Canary Islands, and Barcelona. Currently, she is also involved with

242

the writing of a second novel, managing her bar, El Alivio, in the Malasafia zone, and
playing/producing electronic music with her group.

Due to her profession — music journalist — Grijalba has traversed the globe to
attend and report on musical festivals. From the twenty-ﬁfth anniversary of Woodstock
to Glastonbury and a range of national festivals including Esparrago Rock and Festimad,
Grij alba has participated in international dialogue and accumulated a wealth of
knowledge regarding the constructs and components of the music business, as she was a
ﬁrst-hand spectator and participator in the dynamics. In conjunction with the newspaper,
this writer has also secured a number of interviews with global music icons such as David
Bowie, Mick Jagger, Stockhausen, and John Cage. Aside from her work with El Mundo,
Grijalba has published a series of monographs treating the internationally recognized
music groups Depeche Mode and Dire Straits. Moreover, within the past decade -
illustrating further her afﬁnity for sonic narrative - this writer entered the music circuit as
a disk jockey and ‘theremindista’, the ﬁrst electronic instrument, under the pseudonym
Morgana”. It is signiﬁcant to note that her participation in this fashion — as an
orchestrator of music (DJ or instrument player) - Grij alba enters and achieves success in a
domain inscribed and reiﬁed by hegemonic norms. In an interview regarding her location
in this space she afﬁrms: “Pues si [la muj er dj] tiene que luchar mas que un hombre para
entrar en la cabina como en casi todo en la vida, excepto para ser azafata, prostituta o
ama de casa” (www.el-mundo.es/encuentros/invitados/2002/O9/S08). Further evidence of

her success and transgression of boundaries, Grijalba had the opportunity to disk jockey

 

85 A theremin is the grandfather of electronic music. Electronic instruments trace their roots to this
particular instrument. Russian physicist Leon Theremin (1896-1993) invented the therernin.

243

at major Spanish music festivals: Benicassim, Doctor Music, Festimad, and Esparrago
Rock.

Vis-a-vis direct and indirect participation in the international alternative music
scene, this writer has gained a perspective on the multiplicity of identities that proliferate
the sonic landscape. Likewise, as observer and participator Grij alba possesses profound
knowledge on what it means to be a woman living in contemporary Spain as well as the
experience of the female subject within the music scene, as she has had the opportunity to
cross many ‘naturalized’ gender barriers. The shifts in international and national
locations afforded this writer the opportunity to be immersed in a myriad of cultures
around the globe, and subsequently interact in the global economy as well as be
transformed by it. As manifest in her journal and novelistic work, Grij alba participates in
dialogue with the global community exploring and reporting upon the transformations in
the music scene, and detailing various subj ectivities encouraged and produced within the
respective space. According to this author, the rise of cultures of consumption in Spain is
“cada vez mayor” (Personal Interview 2004), and while it is a paradoxical phenomenon,
Grijalba maintains that consumption can be read as a recuperation of spaces reﬂecting
new societal needs: “. . .deterrninados nr'rcleos culturales que si se estan separando un
poco de la cultura masiva y se estan creando grupos underground” (Personal Interview
2004) of various types. This, in fact, is reﬂected at the end of the novel; she includes a
dictionary of neo-tribes in which she gives name to and describes multiple identities that
participate in this location; for instance, some of the terms she unpacks are: chandalista
desdentado, laly, and noctdmbulos acreditados. The creation of this terminology

stemmed from her experiences observing diverse bodies-in-use, as she states, “el cuerpo

244

femenino y el masculino son para la produccién de signiﬁcado” (Personal Interview
2004). In her opinion, that which adorns the body (brand names, hair styles, tattoos, etc)
“explica como es el personaj e” (Personal Interview 2004). Due to her experiences in the
social realm, she herself can be read as a representation of Donna Haraway’s ‘cyborg’, as
she is a hybrid product of culture negotiations, traversing the musical landscape, which is
in itself a product of technological processes.

The novel Alivio ra'pido emerges as a distinct narrative that traces the path to self-
knowledge and self-discovery within masculine-deﬁned economies; concomitantly, it
articulates the possibility of individual liberation from existing ideological and social
constraints toward a degree of self-determination. While it retains a certain nihilistic
texture, Alivio rdpido is a powerful and ambitious novel that embarks upon the
negotiation of identity — both individual and collective — of youth culture in the musical
terrain. The depth and power of its investigation into the process of construction of self in
conjunction with the Other in a capitalist society, and the way in which the individual
relates, or fails to relate with the other, endows the novel with both artistic merit and
profound social insight. The architecture of the narrative reﬂects postmodern socialities
through its continuous weaving of dialogue, monologue, and streams of consciousness.
Likewise, paying homage to her journalistic career, the novel displays an onus for detail,
no doubt stemming from her familiarity with current events in the musical arena and
mastery of conveying this knowledge in a succinct manner. While it may considered a
progressive narrative due to Alba’s ﬂuid journey, it is important to not gloss over details
that Grijalba injects into the novel such as the increase of violence against women and the

rise of “chistes machistas”. These elements juxtaposed with the molecular wanderings

245

of Alba serve to highlight the paradox not only of consumption, but also the
advancements of the notion of Woman within contemporary Spanish society.

The novel is divided into three parts and each section depicts a distinct sociality.
The plot of Alivio rdpido revolves around a well-known techno music group known as
Asian Vibes and it ﬁve contingents: Fernando, the star of the band, Alba, his girlﬁiend
and sitar player in the group, Pablo and Manolo, members of the band, and Marcos, the
manager of the group. Likewise, in its examination of the techno scene in which Asian
Vibes is immersed, the narrative takes into consideration the dynamics of Alba’s parents
— Soﬁa and Alberto — and how they relate in this space as well as the subjectivities
produced through their negotiation of this musical landscape. As stated, the novel
diverges into three time/space divisions: the music festival in Zaragoza, various Spanish
penitentiaries, and the location of the multinational, including the international
destinations of London and Morroco to which Alba is required to travel. The work can
be read as a journey of the nomadic self, which dazzles across boundaries and transforms
through multiple experiences to arise at a higher understanding of one’s subject. While
this revelation may be valid for a number of the characters, this chapter primarily
explores the subjectivity of Alba; at the opening of the novel her selfhood can be
described as unhealthy and static, yet transforms through multiples experiences and
realizations that affect profoundly the conception and construction of her identity.

This chapter analyzes the formation and evolution of the protagonist’s identity
vis-a-vis her interaction with the material realm. It is signiﬁcant to note that consumption
is understood not as an economic phenomena but as a “particular means of creating

identity, one that is realized in a material reorganization of time and space, as the

246

instrument of self-construction which is itself dependent on high-order modes of
channeling available objects into a speciﬁc relation to a person or persons” (Friedman

151). Hence the cultural examination of consumption points to the analysis of consumer
identity, ways and causes of self-construction and presentation to the other. In
agreement, Grij alba afﬁrms: “. . .para el mundo la imagen es muy importante, que uno
demuestra a1 mundo como es por dentro por su imagen. . .es una forma de crear una
identidad” (Personal Interview 2004). As the task is to examine cultures of consumption
as illustrated in the novel Alivio rdpido, it is essential to trace any differences in the
process of consumption among various players in the novel. In this vein, D. Miller
afﬁrms:

Mass consumption goods often come to stand for the new superordinate
point of identity that subsumes and suppresses cultural difference and
creates drastic global homogenization. . .there is another source of
difference, which might be called posteriori difference, that is more rarely
acknowledged or theorized. This is the sense of quite unprecedented
diversity created by the differential consumption of what had once been
thought to be global and homogenizing institutions. (2-3)

While cultural phenomena such as the techno/rave scene can be treated as a globally
circulating product of culture, as noted by D. Miller, that does not necessarily endow the
commodity with a globalized meaning, rather the consumer via her relationship with the
product, forms her own meaning: “people do speciﬁc things and they attribute speciﬁc
meanings, also a practice of a speciﬁc sort” (Friedman 204). As such this chapter

explores the consumption of speciﬁc locations —- techno/rave and the foreign

247

multinational — to ascertain the type of subjectivity cultivated within the respective
conﬁnes as well as the embodied content. Thus, the aim is to analyze the basis of
subjectivity within this youth culture, considering the various contingencies that compose
it: presentation of the self to the self and others, behavior, and the relation of the self

with the surrounding environment.

Traversing the Techno Terrain: Music, Ritual, and Commodification
Our generation is the best mass movement in history- experimenting with
anything in our search for love and peace. Our temple is sound, we ﬁght
our battles with music, drums like thunder, cymbals like lightning, banks

of electronic equipment like nuclear missiles of sound. (qtd. in Collin 185)

Written by Phil Russel in 1974, this manifesto, utilizing the philosophy of techno
as its foundation, intended to re-claim collective and individual freedoms, embodied in
the celebratory rites of music and dance, jettisoned by the hegemonic economy“.
Creators of this sonic architecture maintain that this particular genre of music is
analogous to a revolt against the “dictatorship” of rock-n—roll. The sonic rebellion of
techno was understood not only as the appropriation of a new kind of music, but also an
assumption of a radically distinct life ideology. This style of music, a blend of
technological elements, began as a revolution in consciousness. The participants, both

creators and listeners, reacted to the power of the multinational music recording business

 

'6 British native Phil Russel was one of the proponents of the ﬁrst People’s Free Festival at Stonehenge.
Writing in the aﬁermath of Woodstock, his goal was to establish communal gatherings whose primary
focus was to validate an alternative existence fostered through spiritual activism and intimately linked to
techno music.

248

through their musical creativity, one that resists the trend of pop. As such, this music
culture — in the eyes of the participants - became a new rite that visibly eclipsed the old”.
With the imminent decadence of the rock era, the rise of techno portended a new
sociality. This sociality resists hegemonic norms by the subversive manifestation of the
dynamic relationship among the human and machine. Donskis afﬁrms: “we are living in
the period of the death of rock. It became the part of mass culture and of earlier so much
despised establishment. . .it became successfully integrated into the system of cultural
industry, which it tried to resist and negate so much” (12). Unlike the commodiﬁed
mainstream rock-n-roll, whose motto revolved around the trilogy of sex, drugs, and
music, the roots of techno music served as a platform for introspection into the self and
an escape ﬁ'om the rigors of institutionalized constraining norms. In this way, techno was
heralded as a “new folk music” (Collin 203), speaking for the “culturally dispossessed”
(203) through its gripping, tenuating sonic narratives. Innovative, the confection of this
hypnotic, expressive music depended upon electronical means; this technology-based
music, acbording to H. Kumagai, offers many possibilities through the interplay of its
various accoutrements: “the key ingredients for techno maestros include a couple direct-
drive turntables. . .a sampling synthesizer, a computer” (321). Since its emergence, this
culture organized around ritual festivity, orgiastic celebration and Satumalian explosion,
reminiscent of a tribal era. Its most salient feature, the music, subsumes the subject in a

harmony of blissful sensations. Sound waves circulate, penetrating the bodies of

\—

87 There is much debate surrounding the genesis of techno music. Some theorists (Kumagai 1994) claim
that it started in the early 805 in the abandoned warehouses of Detroit, pioneered by three DJ ’5 named
Magic (Juan Atkins), Reese (Kevin Saunderon), and Mayday (Derrik May). Nevertheless, others maintain
that this phenomenon has roots in England.

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participants, arousing sensations of rapture, ravishment, being engulfed and
overwhelmed.

Techno, an eternally evolving musical style, can be described as progressive and
cosmopolitan. That is, as it espouses a counterculture mentality, this manifests through
its continual changing, experimental nature. Likewise, this subculture is to a large degree
global. United by an aesthetic that prizes rhythm over words (yet not to their absence),
techno has branched way beyond its disco, hip-hop and synth-pop roots into the musical
traditions of just about every country. Laid over an earthshaking bass or trance-like
skittering drums, Indian classical music is now as in vogue as scratching, and vibes from
India, Morocco, and Spain all thump together on the same records. The best examples of
this intemationalist underground present an exuberant sonic dream of the world as a
musical bazaar, overﬂowing with exotic melodies, grooves, and multifarious lyrical
pathos. This scene presents itself as culture with concerns of a global nature being voiced
from within local environments; likewise, it aims is a spiritual experience. At its best,
this music can offer the jaded something genuinely innovative, something that is exotic
and also that gives electronic music an emotional depth, generally lacking in club music.
Beyond that, Western dilettantes — as evidenced by Soﬁa, Alba’s mother - in search of
Eastern wisdom have looked for spiritual solace in the traditional music of far less
afﬂuent countries. As the world becomes condensed due to the processes of
globalization, it is also expanding as via music, one arrives at an understanding of another
culture.

Continuing with an analysis of this location, a techno event is a total concept. As

well as music, there is the decor, the lighting, and the performances: the way it is

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choreographed and staged. Additionally, this subculture possesses its own language and
codes riff with specialized knowledge, tribal identities, idiolects and subcultures.
Grij alba succinctly portrays her knowledge of techno terminology through her addition of
the “diccionario de nuevas tribus urbanas”; many of the words she coined herself after
observing various groupings of people and their commonalities as well as their
differences from other collectivities at diverse music venues. At its foundation, there is
an informal philosophy which values experience over words. It is not so much a question
of opposing society but rather of demanding new social relationships based on emotive
accord. Within the location of techno, events — parties or festivals- represented
“Shamanic rites which, using the new musical technologies in combination with certain
chemicals and long periods of dancing, preferably in settings with spiritual signiﬁcance”
(Collin 203) that provided a forum for re-connection and re-combination of energies.
The scene, a community composed of a variety of ingredients such as festive-like
gatherings, dancing, and drugs, subverts the hegemonic system in oblique manners. Its
radical potential grounds itself in the usage of advanced technologies that serve as a
protest in a traditional sense against the dominant economy. As such this scene occupies
a position that combines experimentalisrn with criticism as it contrasts the ceaseless and
unquestioning euphoria that has historically plagued the progress of musical technology.
The discourse of techno, as manifest in Asian Vibes, intertwines with that of the
Hippie movement, making manifest a number of commonalities. The similarities
between these discourses are not just a matter of surface style, but rather signal more
profound kinship. The 19605 was an epoch of revolution across the spectrum: politics,

art, music, technology, and lifestyles. Experimentation challenged convention. In the

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late 19605 and the early 19705, the East witnessed an inﬂux of ‘tourists’ from First World
nations. In general, these ‘tourists’ were not yearning for a luxury experience, but rather
were pilgrims in search of an “authentic” Eastern experience, as they admired the
purportedly superior spirituality of the East. The inﬂow of Western foreigners attracted
to the spiritual life of the East led to the exoticization of the other (and all that constitutes
that space), which Edward Said attributes to the creation of unequal power dynamics
between the East and the West. In Orientalism, Said stresses that the East (Orient) does
not merely exist as a geographical territory inhabited by a population of particular
religion or cultures (Said 322). The East remains an imagined contruction, erected by the
West as a result of the West’s interest (imaginary and political) in the Other. By way of
the exoticization of the Orient, the West was able to create an image of the East that stood
in stark opposition to Occidental sovereignty. Said maintains that the notions of the
Orient does not simply signal “an airy European fantasy” (6), but rather a “created body
of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable
material investment” (6). Given this, the Orient reﬂected the binary opposition of the
rational West: passion and paciﬁcations". Orientalism provides a critical account of the
development of this dichotomy in multiple discourses, political, scientiﬁc, and a product
of the arts.

The hippie mecca, India, in particular Goa, acquired special notoriety during the

late 1960s and early 19705 for numerous reasons”. Imagined as the nucleus of free-

 

” Said’s Orientalism has been critiqued by various scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spvak and Homi
Bhaba. These vocal critics question the oversimpliﬁcation of Said’s argument, and his dichotomization of
the subordinate East and dominant West. The aforementioned critics maintain that Said’s conclusions
promote a static vision of power dynamics, negating the possibility for negotiation or change.

9 For 450 years Goa was a Porurgese colony that became part of India in 1961. At the end of the 19605,
Goa experienced an inﬂux of hippies invading its beautiful shores. These hippies, ﬂeeing urban society,

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thinking and looser morals, First World pilgrims arrived to exercise their free agency, and
partake in the “exotic” through their consumption of the territory and its accoutrements:
an articulation of music, dance, drugs, intemationalism, and pilgrimage. Flash forward
three decades, this spirit of resistance and experimentation manifests within the techno
community of Asian Vibes. The techno culture, similar to the old time hippies, is bound
by a common sense of tolerance and desire to form opinions independently of authority
or tradition. The eclectic beat of techno music initiated a new scene that integrated a
hippie approach to life via sonic narratives. This style of music is molded to reﬂect anti-
hegemonic feelings and beliefs, cuhninating in a college of eclectic, electronic beats. The
threads that intertwine the hippie and techno communities — music, drugs,
intemationalism, and pilgrimage -— are rooted in the mission of re-possessing
consciousness in opposition to dominant conformity.

Since its emergence into the sonic scene this subculture, appearing within speciﬁc
social and cultural contexts, has often been evaluated as counterculture against the
patriarchy. Nevertheless, similar to other musical genres, the techno/rave scene is being
commodiﬁed and marketed; however, it remains a prominent form of new production in
music and youth cultures. Similar to the styles of rock-n-roll and punk that began as
diatribes against hegemonic norms, techno, in a sense, has lost some of its original
meaning because like the other musical cultures, it became recognized as an established
genre by the dominant culture. In this respect, the music and culture cannot escape from
the systematic constraint of capitalism insofar as they depend upon commodities in the

expression of self-identity. This notion is highlighted in the thoughts of the protagonist,

 

searched for a paradise inconceivable in the West, one devoid of multinational exploitation and
Westemization.

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Alba, as she meditates upon the ideological structure of the music scene: “Los esquemas
burgueses trasladados a1 rock. . .el rock era e1 arnbiente mas machista de cuantos conocia”
(21).

As culture is not liberated from hegemonic norms or capitalism, the multiple
constituents that compose culture are prone to commodiﬁcation. This process owes
itself, in large part, to the proliﬁc media technologies, which aids and encourages the
creation of celebrity. The notion of fame and celebrity is not a new concept. From the
Ancient Greek and early Christian cultures there existed people of renown who were
admired and worshiped for their many achievements. However, as Roj ek notes, it was
not until the birth of mass media that celebrity culture emerged and ﬂourished; he states,
“I believe that mass-media representation is the key principle in the formation of
celebrity culture” (13). Due to advancements in information technologies, images
circulate and are converted into commodities. In contemporary culture, people no longer
achieve fame for their achievements, but rather for packaged personality, as celebrities
are “cultural fabrications” (Roj ek 13) that have transformed into commodities as goods to
be marketed in their own right or utilized to market other commodities. “The celebrity’s
ultimate power is to sell the commodity that is themselves” (Turner, Bonner, Marshall
12). Forming part of this economy, Fernando enters into the realm of commodiﬁcation as
the lead singer. This is evidenced by the number of female groupies that follow and
pursue Fernando, much to his delight, throughout the music festivals, daring even to
attain access to the personal territory of Asian Vibes — their van - which Alba dubs “las
furgonetas son e1 peor patio de vecinas” (21). While Fernando and his body can be read

as a commodity, it is signiﬁcant to note that he also enters as a player into this game, in

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particular commodifying women. For instance, no matter which music festival he
attends, there is always a number of “ﬁjas”(l9) happy to gratify him sexually. Likewise,
the star singer of the band Las Monaguillash, MOnica, is an important and highly
desirable commodity to F emando as she is “una bomba sexual” (30). His meditations on
her comportment in conjunction with her raw beauty illustrate her value as a sign:
“Ménica hablaba sin parar. Siempre. Aunque Fernando habia follado - gtres? Lcuatro
veces? — con ella, solo habian dormido juntos una noche. El despertar habia sido
horrible. Hablaba, hablaba, hablaba. A Fernando 1e hubiera gustado tener un mando a
distancia y bajarle el volumen” (30). As he is unable to tolerate her incessant chit-chat,
the idea of being able to turn-on and tum-off this woman, as if she were a machinic doll,
is a striking option; or at least, it is much more appealing than “echarla de la cama” (30)
given her sexually charged fabricated representation. In consuming women and sex,
Fernando commodiﬁes the two, as he himself represents a commodity to them.

Celebrity and success have become synonymous in a culture that judges by how
rich, seductive, and riveting the image. This new less durable fame, the kind refracted
through images, proves in this case to be especially corrosive to the self, as Fernando
deals with it through his consumption of drugs, which ultimately leads to his demise, as
well as his selling of drugs to his fans, something he particularly enjoys doing because it
lets him adopt the role of “antiestrella consciente” (62). Indeed, Fernando appears to ﬁnd
it difﬁcult to cope with fame. That is, his actions ranging from indiscriminately selling
drugs to not taking responsibility for his decisions sugest that he is suffering ﬁom a
messiah-like complex. Certainly he believed he was untouchable: “Coi‘lo, soy un musico

mas o menos conocido, llevo una vida normal, tengo uno de los mejores abogados del

255

pais. . .no voy air a la carcel” (62). While his ability to generate collective efferverscence
in audiences is undeniable, perhaps even legendary, Fernando is emphatically mortal, an
imperfect human being. In other words, although fans may worship him to the point of
idolizing him, Fernando is not exempt from the human reahn or his responsibilities.

The celebrity as a commodity is essentially culturally manufactured. In light of
this, Rojek contends:

Celebrities are cultural fabrications [. . .] In fact, celebrities are careﬁrlly
mediated through what might be termed chains of attraction. No celebrity
now acquires public recognition without the assistance of cultural
intermediaries who operate to stage-manage celebrity presence in the eyes
of the public [. . .].Their task is to concoct the public presentation of
celebrity personalities that will result in enduring appeal for the audience
of fans. (5 1)

Thus the image dictates how the self is perceived by the other, as well as the
comportment of others towards the subject. An important element in the analysis of the
celebrity image is the phenomenon of the fan. The fan is, in fact, an integral feature in
the creation process of the image as she has the power to choose of a plethora of images,
the ones to which she will give attention. The images ﬂoating freely as signs have the
potential to provide compelling ideas of perfection. Likewise, they have the potential to
convey the promise that such beauty remains within reach via consumption of
commodiﬁed images. The fan, then, responds to a celebrity ﬁgure via speculative desire.
This desire, not static as it evolves according to commodity innovations, propels the fan

to want to control, even own, her icon.

256

The boundaries of attachment between the public face and the fan are not
clearly delineated. Consuming celebrity products, and generally
reinforcing the image of the public face in ordinary social interaction, are
merely the outward manifestations of attachment. At deeper psychic
levels, fans may adopt the values and style of the public face, and in some
cases, develop unmanageable obsessions. . .Isolation may produce over-
identiﬁcation with the public face and engender the desire to possess the
celebrity or deprive the public face of volition. (Rojek 47)
Thus, this ‘cult of celebrity’ encourages bodies to be viewed as a commodity in the
construction of power, beauty, and desire. These images, consequently, possess gripping
power as fans aspire to resemble images of celebrities despite awareness of their
unreality.

The sociologist Jean Baudrillard suggests that the ‘cult of celebrity’ grounds itself
in a larger trend towards living in the “ecstasy of communication”(The Consumer Society
2). That is, we are barraged by a succession of topical images in the media that do not
necessarily cohere with reality. Consequently, the distinction between that which is real
and its converse, the imaginary, dissolves. In effect, images of celebrities become ‘more
real than real’ in our consumer culture. F iske echos this idea stating: “fantasy can be as
‘real’ an experience as any other” (10). In accord with this line of argument, we are
trying to imitate the people we admire when we use them as models for ourselves. In
consuming a speciﬁc milieu, participants are also marking their identity to the self and
others. One identiﬁes with celebrity because these renowned people seem to possess

qualities that are lacking in common daily life. Rojek afﬁrms: “Celebrities offer

257

peculiarly powerful afﬁrmations of belonging, recognition and meaning in the midst of
the lives of their audiences, lives that may otherwise be poignantly experienced as under-
perforrning, anti-climatic or sub-clinically depressing. . .Celebrities are thought to possess
God-like qualities by some fans...” (52-53). Hence, be it through adoption of fashion or
physical proximity, the celebrity intrigues the fan as the perceived socially lived reality
contrasts sharply with everyday experiences, and so encourage consumption, escapism,
and identiﬁcation. Indeed, fans attach glamourous excitement and even deity-status to

their icons.

Proxemics of techno and portraits of female subjectivity
...She suddenly began again. “Then it really has happened, after all! And
now, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I’m determined to do it!” But
being determined didn’t help her much, and all she could say, after a great
deal of puzzling, was: “L, I know it begins with L” (Through the Looking
Glass 15 7)

Alba is the twenty-seven year old sitar player in the group Asian Vibes and, more
importantly, girlfriend to the well-known singer of the group who has a reputation for
drug and alcohol-fuelled impropriety. As the novel opens, Alba’s meditations about the
band and her connection to it are signiﬁcant as they foreground her identity. She
contemplates: “Llevaba dos meses de gira con un grupo del que seria fan si no formara
parte de él; era la novia oﬁcial de cantante mas deseado del panorama indie nacion ”
(14). Her testimony elucidates that which she consumes and is consequently consumed

by: a series of commodiﬁed images revolving around her proximity and relationship to a

258

celebrity within the techno music scene. Consequently, the most fundamental component
(and also the most destructive) to her identity construction emerges from her status of
ofﬁcial girlfriend and group member, the former surpassing in signiﬁcance: Alba is
obsessively in love with Fernando.

From the inception of the novel emerges the contradictory reality of Alba in the
formation of her subjectivity juxtaposed with the complexity of consumption practices.
The contingencies that form part of her subject formation — girlfriend of a famous rock
star - signal the manner in which she consciously elects to construct her identity and her
life. Her choice of consumption, Fernando, points to her desire to consume celebrity,
which is interwoven with images and signs that incarnate basic values and display
desires. In a culture saturated by a bricolage of images, these very images are heralded as
primary vehicles for expression and communication and serve as factors for identity
construction. Nevertheless, it would be negligent to consider that identity construction
via consumption practices always yields an active liberated subject. Rather in the case of
Alba, her consumption of Fernando and the space that it (celebrity) entails proves to be
unhealthy and transpose her to an inert state. This is patently clear in the attitudes and
actions of Alba as she is on a never-ending vigilant mission of Fernando, for without him,
she feels lost. She relates:

Era la misma sensaciOn que sentia de pequefla cuando en unos grandes
almacenes, en el parque de atracciones 0 en la calle, se soltaba de la mano
de su madre y dej aba de verla durante mas de un minuto: la ansiedad de
estar perdida. Lo malo era que, de niﬂa el agobio duraba como mucho tres

minutos. . .con Fernando. . .tres o cuatro horas. (42)

259

As evidenced by her admissions, her boyfriend is not simply her romantic partner, but
rather ironically she classiﬁes him within the same category as she does her mother — an
image of a nurturer who paradoxically denies her that. Unlike the protagonist of Veo,veo
or Cristina within the proxemics of Planeta X in Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas - both
of which experience libidinal pleasure from their consumption of various accoutrements
such as music, dance, and drugs, which act upon and produce and active subjectivity —
Alba maintains a distinct approach evidenced through the subtleties of her consumption.
While frustrated and depressed, she, in part, is able to share in the celebrity - albeit in an
unresistant mode - through her determinate consumption of Fernando.

Within the proxemics of the techno/rave scene, Alba, indeed, is a consumer of the
musical assemblage to an extent; however, she is most consumed by presenting a certain
image — her status as ofﬁcial girlfriend of Fernando. In this mode, her consumption
grounds itself in pure spectacle. The narrative voice reveals:

...estaba angustiada. Aparentaba divertirse, se emborrachaba como todos
y parecia que disﬁ'utaba, pero se pasaba el dia vigilando: persiguiendo
con la mirada a Fernando. A Fernando hablando con alguna bakalaera que
se empeiiaba en enseﬁarle e1 piercing de su ombligo; Fernando mirando
con cara de embeleso a alguna laly sorprendentemente guapa a la que el
pelo a1 uno pegado a la cara, el jersey de cuello alto y los pantalones mal
cortados le sentaban como si fueran de Prada, 0 Fernando abriendo mucho
la boca, mientras alguna techno hippie medic desnuda 1e metia una pastilla
en la boca, con la esperanza de que la quimica 1e hiciera abalanzarse sobre

ella. (14)

260

While feigning interest in consuming the accoutrements of a bacchanalian festival, Alba
appropriates her gaze to surveil Fernando and deconstruct the different types of eye-
candy that willingly offer themselves to him. Alba is so consumed by maintaining her
relationship, not with just any man but in particular this rock star, that she willingly goes
to extremes to protect the image she consumes. As the novel opens, the protagonist
reveals her alchemic dabblings which have yielded a modern day version “la Pocién
Magica: e1 remedio para amortiguar los efectos del alcohol y acentuar la acciOn de
cualquier droga estimulante” (13). What she failed to mention prior to administering this
medicine to Fernando was a secret ingredient, “un valium 10” (13) that was completely
dissolved. Justifying the creation of this potion, Alba afﬁrms:
En circunstancias nonnales no lo habria hecho, pero estaba en una
situaciOn de emergencia. Llevaba tres dias de vigilia con las que intentaba
conseguir, por medio del control exhaustivo y de no quitarle el ojo encima,
que Fernando no ternrinara compartiendo saco de dormir y ﬂuidos
corporales con cualquiera de las lalys que pululaban por el festival. (13)
In her role as chemical alchemist, Alba feels no remorse, rather she takes pride in the
power that this act endows her: “La idea de convertirse en una especie de Charles
Manson involuntaria le hacia cierta gracias. . .” (15). Moreover, while her actions may
seem extreme, within the music industry, the kind of lifestyle she endures is not out of the
ordinary for “<<esposas de rock>>” (20), women who were perhaps former groupies and
are pathologically in love with their signiﬁcant other as well as the image. The proliﬁc

6‘

privileging of the image has led to the creation of a new parlance: ...seductive

spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in

261

the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply
inﬂuence thought and action” (Kellner 2). Undoubtedly, Alba is enchanted with the ﬁee-
ﬂoating display of images that surround the celebrity of Fernando and, by association,
endow her the experience of prestige, albeit as a shadow. Within this territory of the
techno scene and given her relationship to a celebrity, Alba does not actively produce her
self, rather vis-a-vis her passive consumption of celebrity image (her pathological love of
Fernando), she is separated from actively producing her subjectivity and her life. For her,
Fernando is not simply a boyﬁiend but also he represents a name. “Celebrity itself is
thus commodiﬁed; notoriety becomes a type of capital. Famous people are widely
referred to within the entertainment industry simply as ‘names’” (Gamson 62). Intent on
maintaining her relationship at all costs as well as the cultural capital it endows, Alba is
caught in a maze of power constantly trying to please Fernando yet also control him.
Consumption practices and their relationship with subjectivity are clearly slippery
concepts. While formation of identity occurs by way of consumption of goods and
practices, this process does not always yield liberating healthy results, as is the case of
Alba. Since her aim is to maintain the status quo, the protagonist tolerates all types of
abuse and exploitation and she lacks conﬁdence and the ability to establish personal
boundaries. For instance, Alba was implicitly aware of F emando’s indiscretions.
Furthermore, she ascertained that, more likely than not, his sexual rendezvouses would
not come to an end. In light of this, not only does she try to normalize his inﬁdelity, but
also bolsters herself, to an extent, by associating herself with the “imagined community”

of girlfriends and wives of rock stars. As her afﬁrmation hints, belonging to this small

262

but “prestigious” group of women forms the foundation of her identity, and differentiates

\a’

her from others.
Con el tiempo Alba dejo de hacer predicciones. El [Pablo] penso que era
porque se daba cuenta de que cuando 1e decia que Fernando era un santo
ﬁdelisirno, ella sabia que mentia. Pero no, Alba se habia resignado, tenia
la certeza de que cada vez que Fernando salia de gira, la caja de condones
se iba vaciando y algo 1e decia que eso no iba a carnbiar nunca. Al
principio penso en dejarle. Pero se dio cuenta de que habia pasado a
formar parte de lo que ella deﬁnia como las <<esposas del rock>>: chicas
modemas, mas o menos cultas, patolégicamente enamoradas y muchas de
las veces con un pasado como groupies que aplicaban con un estoicismo
natural la teoria del <<oj os que no ven, corazén que no siente>>. (20)
In consuming the image of music star, Alba (consciously or otherwise) relinquishes her
I'ights of independence and ﬁ'eedom (of speech), yet all the while she resents those she
eEmpowers. As Rojek contends, “Public acclaim answers to a deep psychological need in
all of us for recognition. Acclaim carries the sensual pleasure of being acknowledged as
all object of desire and approval” (95). True to the goal of advertising and mass media,
Fernando functions as a fantasy object. As a commodity, he is an image of impossible
perfection tantalizing the public with the lure of a fully achieved selfhood; Alba buys into
this image.
Via her choices in consumption, the protagonist negotiates a unique situation as
She forms part of the packaged image that is Asian Vibes, yet she still remains on the

Outside as she is marginalized within that position. In the group, Alba forms part of the

263

texture of the sonic narrative as she plays the sitar. Nevertheless, her boyfriend Fernando
wishes she did not participate and subsequently desires to disassociate her and her

presence from his public image. He contemplates:

Mi madre no acompaf‘laba a mi padre al estudio de arquitectura, ni iba con

él a los viajes de trabajo. LPor qué soy asi de débil, coho? LSeré posible
que otra vez me haya dej ado convencer por Alba para que toque el sitar
durante la gira? J Oder, Pablo consigue unos samplers mucho mejores. No
nos hacia falta un sitar en directo. . .hombre, si necesito a Alba, pero no
durante las giras. . .(29)

The comparison he draws between the role of his mother and that of Alba is noteworthy
as it mirrors the patriarchal model whereby the woman is represented as an absence.
Furthermore, it elucidates how he views Alba as a sexual commodity with a use value,
however only valuable to him outside of the territory of the techno scene. Within this
musical landscape, the attention he desires is that of his numerous female fans who
Consume not only his music, but also his celebrity and sexually charged physical aspect.
Alba does not ﬁt within this plan; indeed, he compares her presence at musical events to
that of his mother’s presence. Nevertheless, within the territory of home when he is off-
stage and the fans are not mobbing him with their desire, the presence of Alba sufﬁces.

As signiﬁcant other to a celebrity, it is interesting to note the connections Alba
establishes - due principally to her experiences- between musical stars and their
girlfriends. From the inception of their relationship, Alba was confronted with the reality
about relationships and the meaning of ﬁdelity among musical stars and their signiﬁcant

Others. At the beginning of their relationship three years earlier, Alba traveled to the

264

town of Marbella in order to meet up with a popular singer for the purpose of
collaborating on the compilation of a disc that included his singing and her playing the
sitar. While there, she had the opportunity to accompany him around the southern towns
of Marbella and Estepona; in both locations, “terminaban asediados por toda una
avalancha de chicas locas por ligar con él. Cada maﬂana tenian a una distinta en la mesa
del desayuno” (20-21). In the position of observer, Alba witnessed the interactions
between the celebrity and the plethora of women, each perhaps as replaceable as the next.
Her last day in Marbella she had the privilege to meet the singer’s girlfriend who “llegO
para recogerle e irse de vacaciones a Calcuta” (21). Before the couple left, Alba had the
Opportunity to have an insightful chat alone with the girlfriend of the musical star, in
Which “la quimica femenina funcioné y empezaron las conﬁdencias” (21). Their
Conversation is signiﬁcant as it uncovers a commonality amongst them: their function as
girlfriend of highly desirable celebrities. The girlﬁiend explained to Alba:
...algo que a Alba entonces 1e horrorizo, pero que entenderia con el
tiempo. La novia no intento sonsacarla, averiguar si e1 mr'rsico habia
estado con otras, ni nada parecido. Como para salvar su honor, 1e explicé
que entendia que era muy diﬁcil veneer 1a tentaciOn de acabar la noche
con chicas guapisirnas, que te admiran ciegarnente y no piden nada a
cambio. Que ella entendia que su novio 5e fuera con ellas y que no le
importaba demasiado. Intentaba no pensar en el asunto, jamas investigaba
ningr'm indicio y decia que lo importante era que siempre volvia.

<<Cuando estamos juntos, me hace feliz>>, se conforrnaba. (21)

265

This anecdote of shared commonalities among the two women highlights Irigaray’s claim
that woman- within the masculine economy - does not cease to function as a commodity.
For woman is traditionally a use-value for man, an exchange value among
men; in other words, a commodity. As such, she remains the guardian of
material substance, whose price will be established, in terms of the
standard of their work and of their need/desire, by “subjects”: workers,
merchants, consumers. Women are marked phallicly by their fathers,
husbands, procurers. And this branding determines their value in sexual
commerce. Woman is never anything but the locus of a more or less
competitive exchange between two men. (This Sex Which is Not One 31)
Many people are curious as to the allure of a man like Fernando, which indeed, extends to
the reality behind the public perception of his way of living. The press and his groupies
dub him a sexy and desirable commodity and considered him to be the “cantante mas
deseado del panorama indie naciona ” (14). Hence these festivals and events attended by
II’lusic icons spawn a backstage culture in which groupies thrive. In this vein, Asian
Vibes would not be complete without a shoal of young females clamoring to gain entry to
the hallowed vans in order to gain a glimpse of their object of desire — Fernando. Much
like these groupies, Alba consumes celebrity; she consumes the items that she imagines
Will help create and sustain her idea of herself, image, and identity. Alba’s actions
1“eafﬁrm Bocock’s theory that consumers buy commodities in hopes that the goods ﬁrlﬁll
their desire to internalize the symbolic identities of the commodities (68). In her pursuit
and much desired possession of Fernando, Alba, too, selects goods — rhetoric and

material items- that align with her quest. While remaining unfulﬁlled, via her enduring

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dedication and consumption of this scene, the protagonist aspires to be the one and only
woman in F emando’s life as well as garner the eminence that emanates from this rock
star. Similar to stalker fans who relentlessly tail the object of their obsession and attach a
personal meaning to their every word and gesture, Alba borders on a dangerously ﬁxated
fan who came close to harming Fernando, in order to control him. Many people are
attracted to marrying/dating a rock star without having given due consideration to what
the person may actually be like. This manifests in Alba’s thoughts as it angered her that
Fernando: “encajara tan perfectamente en sus canones estéticos. Estaba convencida de
que ésa era la raiz de todas sus desgracias” (64). As evidenced through her admission,
she consumes the spectacle of Fernando without regard to his interior qualities. Although
it has crossed her mind an exponential number of times, she was incapable of leaving
him: “Una vez salvados los escollos de la costumbre; el prestigio social que daba estar
Con el cantante de Asian Vibes; la complicidad y una vida sexual infrecuente pero
intensa. . .al tenerlo delante no podia” (64). From Alba’s perspective, the idea of her
relationship with Fernando is quite glamorous, as he incamates her notion of the
aesthetically perfect man and reminds her of the many international musical idols she
fantasized about as a youth - Miguel Bose, Peter Murphy, Julian Cope, Richard Butler,
and Jeremy Irons; the difference, though, lies in the fact that those men represented a
dream and for her, while Fernando is tangible, her own personal idol worthy of deity-like
Worship: “Al mirarle se producia una especial de hechizo por el que le resultaba
imposible pronunciar la frase que llevaba dias resonando en su cabeza: <<Hemos
letminado, estoy harta de tu egoismo y tus inﬁdelidades, lo nuestro no funciona>>”(64).

As her thoughts highlight, reality with Fernando does not corroborate with her dreams of

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glamour and glitz. What happens to Alba is that she forms a relationship with a person
who is so desirable in the eyes of his fans, his record companies, his groupies and his
peers that she veers dangerously close to believing that Fernando is as wonderful as his
packaged image. Furthermore, not only does she consume Fernando and his celebrity in
the music landscape to bolster her own self-esteem and worth, but also she justiﬁes his
inﬁdelity through what she believes to be her own personal deﬁciencies:
<<Si yo estuviera tan buena como él y fuera consciente de que cualquier
persona que se me acerque estaria dispuesta a follar conmi go, creo que
actuaria igual que sospecho que actr'ra él>>. . .la inﬁdelidad para Alba, no
era cuestién de ética sino mas bien de oportunidades. <<Si tienes la
ocasién de ser inﬁel con alguien que no merece la pena demasiado, pues a
lo mejor vences la tentaciOn. Pero si se te acerca gente estupenda:
extraordinariamente guapa, simpatica, inteligente. . .que ademas te admira
y te lo dice. . .muy pocos quieren resistirse.>> (65)
Alba maintains that if she were aesthetically on par with her lover, she too would possess
the cultural capital with which he is endowed. This also hints at her perspective on
relationships as she nearly likens them to an impulsive shopping spree in a store full of
eYe-candy; it is easier to resist that which does not stimulate the senses, yet exceedingly
more difﬁcult to not buy into the allure of a marketable beauty. Thus beauty is intimately
1inked to power. Expanding upon her theories, she admits that she was not “guapa de
nacimiento” (64) and consequently she was irnpulsed to turn to the world of consumer
goods in the attempt to acquire this highly prized and elusive commodity: beauty.

Through stringent means such as diets, coloring her hair, and applying makeup, Alba

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molded and shaped her body with the hope of becoming an aesthetic equal of F emando.
Likewise, she reveals that this has not been a recent phenomena but something that has
gained momentum since her childhood:
De pequeiia, 1e habia dado por tomar litros y litros de vinagre. Le dijeron
que destruia los globulos rojos, producia anemia y uno se quedaba palido
y ﬂaco. Pero nada, los lingotazos del vino agrio que bebia para parecerse
a La Darna del Lago, a Siouxie o incluso a Clarita (Alba pertencecia mas
bien a1 fenotipo de Heidi), no le hicieron efecto” (15).
Signiﬁcantly, Alba cites renowned women portrayed in various medium of popular
iconography - posters, punk rock music, and television - disseminated by the mass
media. In this instance, her body begs to be read as the body is a means over and through
Which relations of power are created, driven, and thwarted. Her revelations expose her
Profound yearning to incarnate the impractical and perhaps even unaccessible qualities of
this “imagined community” of women: to have an attenuated ﬁgure similar to that of the
aforementioned women. In light of this, the statements that the body makes take on
iIlereasingly more importance, as the notion of ‘thinness’ and ‘paleness’ bestows cultural
capital. These two qualities signal a romanticized image of the decadent, explicitly
associated with the rock and roll lifestyle. In the attempt to attain the beauty and stature
0f international icons prized by mass culture, Alba resorted to extraordinary means to
fabricate the desired commodity. While she was able to “mantener los michelines bajo

control” (15) she continued to envy those blessed with a genetics whom “estaban siempre

demacrados” (15). Her standards for measuring beauty are noteworthy as they reﬂect the

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privileging of the slender, pre-pubescent body, exempliﬁed by the ﬁgures from mass
culture she mentioned earlier.

A contingent of the identity formation of Alba is her days spent in constant
vigilance of Fernando — her appropriation of the gaze. Nevertheless, the task of
surveillance becomes progressively more insurmountable and the prospect of ﬁnding
happiness less likely. Yet along the way, Alba comforts herself with thoughts of other
brave women who have sacriﬁced themselves on behalf of their famous signiﬁcant
others. Meditating on her relationship, Alba remembers the words of Juana, an ex-
girlﬁiend of Fernando who “aﬁrmaba que se habia hecho yonqui por culpa de él” (88).

When she ﬁrst heard this, Alba believed it to be foolish but in hindsight it made more
Sense to her: “La r'mica forma de soportar el ritrno de Fernando, su costumbre de tenerla
Siempre en vilo era, en opiniOn de Alba, 0 bien practicando durante aﬁos algr'm sistema de
cOntrol mental 0 con ayuda de algt'rn producto quimico que hiciera soportar mejor e1 paso
de1 tiempo, es decir, la espera. La heroina era la solucién perfecta” (88). For Alba the
uSe of drugs provides a respite from her continual self-doubts and paranoia about the
rendezvous of her boyfriend. Within the proxemics of the techno scene, Alba occupies
the position of girlﬁiend to a celebrity controlled by his impulses. As such, the
subj ectivity of the protagonist is marginalized by the infantile desires of Fernando. Alba

is excluded and in the “position of experiencing herself only fragrnentarily, in the little-
Sll'ucture margins of a dominant ideology, as waste, or excess, what is left of a mirror

invested by the (masculine) ‘subject’ to reﬂect himself, to copy himself” (Irigaray This
Sex Which is Not One 30). Not only is this evidenced through her use of drugs as an

escape, but furthermore vis-a-vis her adoption of patriarchal discourse, whereby she

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silences her own voice. As the band travels to various festivals, often Alba is in the
position to listen to the sexual trysts of her cohorts. On numerous occasions- due to
physical proximity with the group — Alba was witness to lockerroom talk which detailed
a ménage a trois had by Marcos, various rendezvous of Manolo, as well as “cémo los
miembros de distintos grupos intercambiaban teléfonos de las fan de tal o cual ciudad
para tener un polvo amarrado a su llegada” (42). Likewise she was privy to the sexual
specialties of various women such as “la camarera del bar La Luna” (42), anxious to
perform a variety of sexual acts on the music stars. Upon hearing these anecdotes, Alba
participated enthusiastically in the banter of her cohorts, qualifying them as masculine
comments that she would never repeat among her female ﬁiends. In this context, Alba
herself appropriated a masculine discourse, treating other women as simple sexual
commodities with speciﬁc use values. To be accepted, she was unable to cultivate her
true self, posing instead to garner attention and approval from the predominantly male
band. Yet, she believed that this type of attitude was fundamental to her survival in the
music world: “Era un mecanismo de supervivencia. Ella habia aprendido que para ser
aceptada en ese mundo mas bien misdgino y casi siempre cuartelero era necesario
renunciar (hasta cierto punto) a algunos principios” (42). The question is, though, to
what degree. In this environment, Alba constantly compares herself to other women and
devalues other women for various reasons, viewing them and herself as commodities in
competition for the position of girlfriend to a highly desired person. To this end, she
appropriates a masculine discourse that depreciates and essentializes women, positioning
them in constant combat amongst themselves. Yet, she maintains the romantic fantasy

that perhaps, just maybe, change may occur.

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Within this location, it is interesting to note the role of fashion in the construction
of self-image. According to P. Willis, “clothes, like musical tastes, are indication of the
cultural identities and leisure orientations of different groups of young people. Young
people are very adept at the symbolic work of developing their own styles and also at
‘reading off’ and decoding the dress styles of others and relating them to musical,

political, and social orientations” (88). In this way, body dressing should not simply be
read as an amalgamation of mere commodities, but as a representation of ideas, values,
and identity. This notion can be strengthened through Alba’s choice of fashion, which
proj ects a rebellious style that downplays feminine sexuality via her choice of sporting
camouﬂage and a T-shirt.
Imbécil, imbécil. Me he tenido que poner estos pantalones de camuﬂaje y
la camiseta. g'No habia nada que me sentara peor? Con esta pinta mejor
que ni salga. gMe daria tiempo de ponerme el biquini con el traje de
pldstico encima? Ni de coﬁa. Debo tener la cara coma unﬂotador y esa
zorra ahr': perfecta, con las pestafias postizas a la una del mediodr'a. De
verdad que para ser sex symbol hay que nacer. gDo’nde se tefiird el pelo
mientras estd de gira? Yo llevo mes y medio y ya tengo unas raices que ni
Kurt Cobain... (30)
I\IeVer’theless, it is noteworthy that upon gazing at MOnica and her highly sexualized
ilnage, Alba chastises herself for not fabricating a more seductive look by donning a
bikil'ri and plastic cover-up. Furthermore, she recognizes the commodiﬁcation involved
in the process of fashion and beauty. By virtue of beauty products and body dressing,

Ménica creates an alluring image fabricated through her consumption of myriad

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consumer goods: hair dye, artiﬁcial eyelashes, and sensual clothing. Alba’s image is
sharply contrasted with that of MOnica, the star singer of Monaguillash.
...aquel dia e1 espectaculo visual que le ofrecia Ménica 1e habia parecido
impresionante. . .aquel cuerpo de adolescente con unas tetas goperadas?
perfectas: mechones de pelo azul cubriendo las dos tiras de tela ﬁnisima y
transparente; piel blanquisima decorada con un tatuaje de un tulipan rosa
sobre el estémago, con un tallo que baj aba hasta el pubis; e1 coxis llenos
de estrellitas y corazones; una Campanilla con su barita magica sobre el
brazo y un minishort vaquero minusculo para tapar solo a medias un culo
respingOn. (30)
In consideration of the band name, Monaguillash, and her choice of body dressing there
exists a double irony. First, the term ‘monaguillo’ is utilized to refer to male assistants
that facilitate in the rituals of the Catholic mass, and now it is re-appropriated in its
fen'linized form. Sexy and striking, MOnica incamates a dangerous yet transgressive
representation of the femme fatale, as her dark blue hair contrasts with her fair
complexion and her choice of clothing reveals a body emblazoned by provocative tattoos.
Thmngh her choice of clothing and skin decorations, she participates in a game of
Synlbols, appropriating and revising while creating the image — one that is highly sexual -
She desires to present. Alba, within the location of techno, functions more or less as raw
thatel'ial for the authorization of the masculine fantasy. She solely bases her existence on
being the girlfriend of a famous and highly desirable musician. By association, as the
“Ofﬁcial girlfriend” of Fernando, her body converts to currency, as she occupies an

enviable position. That she receives gratiﬁcation from her resulting commodiﬁcation is

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undoubtedly true, but in the words of Irigaray, this type of enjoyment and its resulting
embodiment “is above all a masochistic prostitution of her body to a desire that is not her
own, and it leaves her in a familiar state of dependency upon man. Not knowing what
she wants, ready for anything, even asking for more, so long as he will ‘take’ her as his
‘object’ when he seeks his own pleasure” (Speculum 250). At this stage in her journey,
AJba does not access her voice nor know what she genuinely desires. Consequently, she
is relegated to a state of passivity that impedes active self-formation.

While within the proxemics of the techno scene Alba does not actively construct
her female subjectivity, it is interesting to compare how her mother, Soﬁa, negotiates this
landscape as well as the type of subjectivity she exhibits. The mother of Alba manifests
subj ectivity distinct of her daughter’s within this space of techno/rave culture, as she
experiences this location in a sexually liberating mode. No strangers to the alternative
scene, the parents of Alba, Soﬁa and Alberto, were members of the 19605 counterculture
hippy movement that adopted a nomadic lifestyle at odds with traditional Western values.
From their perspective, institutions such as government, industry, and traditional social
mol‘es embody a uniﬁed establishment lacking legitimacy. This ideology manifests in the
dynamics of their family on various levels from the food they consume “el curry, e1 tofu
y el Seitan” (3 8) to their pilgrimages to San Francisco, a special place that reminds Soﬁa
and Albert of “la época del love and peace, de las tardes tirados en el Golden Gate Park,
103 paseos por Haight Ashbury o 105 conciertos del Grateful Dead” (3 8), and from their

own careers — both are artists - to their desire that Alba quit her job in public relations at
the multinational and effectively “<<abandonarlo todo por el arte, por la mrisica>>” (18).

This type of artistic spirit cultivated among the parents of the protagonist is also

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embodied in the subj ectivities of her brothers, Arturo and Zeus, albeit in distinct manners.
W, a vegetarian who studied ecological architecture, dedicates his energies to
political activism, a devotion that was sparked at “las manifestaciones del 0,7” (40) and
now travels to cities around the globe in order to “participar en las acciones en contra de
la globalizacion y la condonacion de la deuda extema de los paises del Tercer Mundo”
(40). Meanwhile, Zeus, who changed his name to Pedro much to the chagrin of his
parents, followed a different path. Obsessively interested as a youth in math and
computers, from an early age his goal in life was to become a “<<Millonario>>”, which
his parents believed to be akin to “la encamacién del diablo” (3 8), as this desire
jettisoned their fundamental principles. Aﬁer reaching his goal, attained by the creation
and subsequent sale of “Videonet” (38) to Microsoft, however, he was plagued by his

conscience that consequently led him to the role of benefactor of those less privileged.

The narrative voice elaborates:

Colaboraba activamente con Amnistia Intemacional; habia apadrinado a
dieciséis niﬂos indios; hizo una donacion para construir un hospital en
Mozambique; habia ﬁnanciado la construccion de una comunidad budista
en Formentera (donde su madre impartia clases de meditacion y yoga en
verano) y, por ﬁn, vivia reconciliado con sus padres, que ya veian con
buenos ojos las prestaciones de intemet. (39)

The Consideration of his benevolence, however, is complicated if one gives thought to the

tax deductions (capitalist gains) he receives in exchange for his goodwill. In sum, the

dynamics of Alba’s farme illustrate the amalgamation of different identities informed

and cultivated by international negotiations and models.

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In contrast to her daughter, this environment and its accoutrements afford Soﬁa a
libidinal return on her investment that is not possible for her daughter, due to her
unhealthy consumption of celebrity. Soﬁa embodies hybrid subjectivity; she is
“seductora y encantadora por naturaleza” (50), which belies her role as mother.
Traditionally a patriarchal society deﬁnes the mother as a giving and available ﬁgure, one
that downplays her own needs, ambitions, and desires. Occupying the position of mother,
Soﬁa transgresses prescribed attributes and behaviors, interpreting herself as she thinks
ﬁt, and living her life according to her desires. Grijalba denominates this character as a
“luchadora” (Personal Interview 2004), as she was reared during the Franco regime, yet
chose to espouse progressive norms, an election reﬂected in her present day life as well.
In contrast to the image offered by the mothers of her cohorts, Soﬁa embodies “la vision
de una Madre vital, optimista, llena de una sensualidad natural” that one does not
associate with maternity, rather she commands admiration and entrances the members of
the musical group, leaving them “hipnotizados” (51). Nevertheless, her image presents
PTOblems for Alba. That is, when she is present, Alba feels as if she does not exist: “ya
emDezaba a acostumbrarse a que cuando su madre estaba presente, ella no existiera” (50).
For instance, on one occasion when her parents arrive bearing a gift for the members of
Asian Vibes, “MDMA puro” (51), Alba feel the need to displace herself from the scene;
She relates:

En ese momento sabia que no existia. Fernando, Marcos y Manolo
estaban embruj ados por el encanto de esa mujer de cuarenta y pico aﬁos
(que no aparentaba mas de treinta y pocos) que, para mas morbo, podia ser

la madre de cualquiera de ellos no por la edad o por la apariencia, sino

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porque, de hecho, era la madre de uno de ellos: concretamente de Alba.

(52)
It could be said that Soﬁa maintains a hybrid identity of a re-programmer. That is, she
views the techno/rave scene as a contemporary version of the ancient dance-drug rituals
of tribal shamans. According to Grijalba, this is one of the positive aspects within this
scene: “Lo ideal sen'a que la droga pueda efectuar una transformacién shamanica”
(Personal Interview 2004). Soﬁa possessed a romantic vision of this territory that is
revitalized via the energies generated by the vibes in conjunction with drugs, yet not all
drugs, rather MDMA”. This is evidenced by her participation in this space on the ‘carpa
de dance’ with Pablo, who accompanied her to avoid thinking and having to talk about
his rocky long-distance relationship with Ana.

As Grijalba accurately depicts in Alivio rdpido, drugs such as Ecstasy are very

oﬁen connected with the international techno/rave culture. While participants consume a
Palette of drugs, evidenced by the indulgences of Fernando, Manolo, and Marcos, Ecstasy
is the drug most intimately linked with this culture”. The salient effects of this chemical
enhancement are “increased enjoyment of dancing, improved quality of life, greater case
Of Self expression, more caring for other people, increased spiritual awareness, greater

haDpiness, increased closeness with lover” (Saunders 51). In Ecstasy and the Dance
\

The father of MDMA (Ecstasy is the marketed name) is Alexander Schulgin, a research chemist in the US.
'10: Soﬁa did gift the members of Asian Vibes pure MDMA, she also made it exceedingly diﬁicult for

her .daughter’s boyfriend, Fernando, and the other group members to obtain cocaine. This was achieved by
teumg the ‘ofﬁcial’ dealer of the festival that the boys did not use that type of drug.

No es que, realmente, pensara que Manolo, Marcos y Fernando no querian

comprar cocaina y que les habia librado de aquel <<pesado>>. Ella sabia que

los tres consumian casi a diario y con ese acto y su ﬁlosoﬁa de que la accion individual

y cotidiana consigue transformar el mundo, habia conseguido que en aquella ocasion

les resultara mas diﬁcil meterse unos tiros. (54)

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Culture, Saunders also afﬁrms that “there have been various claims that Ecstasy
facilitates spiritual practices including meditation, yoga, tai chi, guided imagery,
psychosynthesis, shamanic journey work and rebirth”(39), and furthermore, “the
combination of the drug with music and dancing can produce an exhilarating trancelike
state, perhaps similar to that experienced in tribal rituals or religious ceremonies” (41 ).
According to Soﬁa, who decides to consume pure MDMA, her main purpose for doing so
is to feel free and “A ver qué se siente toméndolo con tanta gente y para bailar. . .” (52).
Breaking through restraints, Ecstasy works upon her body to produce a more open,
energized text. Likewise, as seen through her performance on the dance ﬂoor, the
combination of drug-dance helps her to escape from the ordinary by providing
possibilities for new experiences. In this context, it is signiﬁcant to note that her use of
drugs within the techno scene parallels the use of chemical enhancements by the hippie
culture. According to P. Willis, in hippie culture, “the essence of the dialectical role of
drugs is that they supplied the raw material of open and exceptional experience which
could be interpreted in appropriate social and cultural ways to reﬂect and develop other
aspects of consciousness and activity so as to further modify the drug experience” (135-
1 36). Within the hippie culture, as the author notes, drugs were viewed as aids to “open
up blocked experiential area” (139) as “there was a direct contact here with what was
understood of Eastern religions and culture” (144). In a parallel manner, this corresponds
With Soﬁa’s socially lived experience and purpose for dabbling with chemical
enhancements. In sum, the drugs work upon bodily texts encouraging a particular type of
Subj ectivity, the act of indulging in alchemic intensiﬁcations represents the negotiation of

new contingencies for the formation of subjectivity.

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To understand how Soﬁa negotiates this territory and the subjectivity that it
encourages, it is necessary to deconstruct the aspects of the dance floor. A sprawl of
bodies resonating a collective energy, on the dance floor the bodies oscillate in unity
forming concentric circles. The exterior is populated by “los mirones y los timidos: los
que solo movian el pie 0, de vez en cuando, la cabeza” (56), whereas the participants at
the nucleus heed the beats of the sonic narrative, opening up their selves to experience
life as a dance, feeling a wholeness with the music: “A medida que uno se acercaba a1

nricleo era mas nitida la sensacion de calor, humedad, de roces viscosos y la necesidad de
dej arse llevar por el sonido del bombo, palpitando en el vientre, y alguna linea de bajo
para llevar e1 ritmo con los brazos” (56). Involvement within this particular location —
the center of the ‘carpa de dance’ — portrays a special kind of delirium, akin to a frenzy
that borders on the religious and a total assault on the senses. Music is a fundamental
eXperience of this territory as the electric vibes crash in visceral waves over the dancers,
unleashing intense psychic energies and driving the audience further and further into
trance. Soﬁa occupies the space at the center of the dance ﬂoor, dancing and pendulating
“Como una deidad hindr'r” (56). Signiﬁcant, there exists an association among the hippy
Counterculture surging from the Vietnam War and its revival (for Soﬁa) manifest in
Asian Vibes. Part of the “baby-boom” generation, Soﬁa and Alberto were born into
Fl‘ancoism and came of age during the Vietnam War; they spent time in San Francisco
and had a communion with the counterculture hippy community. This alternative
cotInnunity espoused oriental mysticism, radical political perspectives, very liberal ideas
regading sexuality, use of hallucinogenic drugs, communal living, and music. Within this

tel‘l‘itory Soﬁa is not only able to feel communion with a group through partaking in a

279

collective ecstatic celebration, but also revive, if only temporarily, the connection
between the past and the present.
Sonidos repetidos una y otra vez, como mantras, un ritmo que iba
aumentando de velocidad y obligaba a1 baile; hiperventilacion y la
consiguiente falta de anhidrido carbonico en la sangre (un truco que todas
las religiones utilizan para llevar a la alucinacion mistica a sus feligreses);
calor y comunion con el resto del grupo. . .los ingredientes que Soﬁa habia
aprendido que eran basicos para llegar a1 trance. (5 7)
Backlashing against conforrnism of dominant norms, there are no prescribed rules how to
dance, which step one should take, or direction to turn. As such her bodily text supports
Haraway’s concept of ﬁguration of the cyborg; with the changing lights, her movements
appear ﬂuid, and in consuming the accoutrements of this scene, she explores new
possibilities for the creation of female subjectivity.
Todo le parecia perfecto: la musica repetitiva que iba acelerandose a1
ritmo de los latidos de su corazén; aquella gente joven, tan guapa, tan
feliz, que le contagiaba esa energia que hacia unos aﬁos salia de ella de
forma natural y que con el tiempo tuvo que aprender a captar por medio de
técnicas orientales y demas trucos altemativos. . .(5 7)
It Seems that the dancing provides a means for her to reach her inner self, without turning
to Scripts or prescriptions. Likewise, her participation in this territory validates her
esCape of naturalized gender roles as she sheds the role of mother, instead opting for one
of peer. In her negotiation of this location, Soﬁa asserts her sexuality; ever so gently, she

provocatively touches a tattoo of a black star on the sternum of her dance partner Pablo:

280

“A Soﬁa le hubiera gustado lamerla, quitarle la humedad mojandola mas, pero se limito a
tocarla, muy suavemente, con el dedo indice muy estirado” (59). Instead of waiting for
her dance partner Pablo to make an advance or even entertaining the idea that he
maintained interest, Soﬁa enticingly caresses him, desiring though, to do much more. In
this context, Pini investigates the British rave scene in conjunction with the formation of
female subjectivity and notes: “women involved in early British rave experienced this
scene as sexually progressive in as much as it enabled an escape from the traditional
associations between dancing, drugged-up women and sexual invitation” (117). Pini
argues that this particular space, the rave, elucidates the unraveling of tradition; whereas
throughout history the notion of woman has been neatly bound by patriarchal
constrictions that control and shape textual body, these are eroded in rave. This is due to
the “adventure” (154) that the space rave permits women; it is a locale where the primary
goal is to attain the utmost arnout of pleasure and as such corporeal and cerebral
delectation lie at the forefront. The rave can be considered an act of deﬁance to the
Patriarchy. The components of this space — rave - are intimately linked to femininity and
gay culture due to their close connection to dance, drugs, displays of emotion, and desire
to heighten consciousness. Both of these groups remain on the margins in the dominant
par'élcligrn, yet challenge the power dynamics in a myriad of modes. This daring
resiStance to authority manifests in: visual exhibitions of ‘ happiness’, autoerotic
pleiisure, ‘friendliness’, and the vigorous indulgence of dance (Dyer 101). In light of

SOfia’s experiences and Pini’s argument, one can afﬁrm that techno/rave liberates gender

El'Oln traditional culturally prescribed norms and rules of dancing.

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Kumagai emphasizes that the participants within this dance scene form a
collectivity that partake and communicate to each other via the common language of
dance. He contends that the dancers:

...don’t stand out as an individual. You are just part of the whole
exhibition. The other troupe members include all the rave-happy dancers
around you. Collective dancing ensures that no singular stars shine at
raves. Instead, each dance-tranced raver shines equally as bright as all the
others. As a result, dancing may form the most important bonding
mechanism at a rave. A sense of commonality arises when hundreds or
thousands of characters energetically stomp on common ground to a
common groove. (3 18)
Not only is the commonality between participants evidenced through the sonic
communion, but also Kumagai ﬁrrther alludes to an ongoing cosmic blending as the
music nurtures the mind, body, and soul. According to Pini, this spiritual oneness that
places “stress on ‘wholeness’ clearly echoes certain ‘New Age’ ideas about mind and
body ‘balance”’ (121). Soﬁa exempliﬁes the mind-body connection not only by way of
her participation in dance, but rather how she embodies and appropriates a harmonious
combination of elements. The music -— through its repetition- produces a transformation
in states of consciousness, which precipitates a transcendental, whole-body experience.
Enraptured by the repetitive beats that literally seize the body, heart, and mind, vis-a-vis
her dancing experiences, Soﬁa arrives at a deeper understanding of her self, identity, and
desires and at the same time sheds traditional gender constraints. This occurs via the

relationship between the music and the vigor of her dancing, which penetrates her body

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as well as stimulates her mind, much like mantras and other practices she employed to
arrive at a state of trance, communion with the group as well as a more profound
communion with her self (something she notes that she has not experienced in years).
Worked upon by the sonic landscape and chemical enhancements, Pablo and
Soﬁa share an intense sexual moment on the dance ﬂoor, which was initiated by her:
“Sentia una mezcla entre una palpable excitacion sexual y una rafaga de calma, de
proteccion que nunca antes habia experimentado” (59-60). While the means to produce
this style of music is technology, the end is to reach the human spirit, and indeed it does
for the pair; the two compare this special time with a literary reference: The Island by
Aldous Huxley. Their experience is reminiscent of “e1 Moshka” (61) in Huxley’s novel,
which in Sanskrit is akin to ‘liberation’ and also is the term utilized to refer to the drug
taken by the residents of the island Pala; the ultimate goal of the drug is to arouse the idle
mind so that it may begin to perceive and appreciate knowledge, and then strive towards
liberation. Indeed, her experience- a complete contrast to that of her daughter- does
reﬂect this philosophy as she does contemplate and experience new knowledge of her
self. By way of her experiences within this musical realm she was able to shed
traditional female stereotypes, realize pleasure stemming from alchemic play, and
disconnect with establishment wandering into the unknown, making it up as she went
along. In sum, this style of music calls attention to the evolving nature of our
technological societies and to the global mélange of cultures that inform and conform

them.

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Nomadic Journey to Active-Subjectivity
Albo,ba:...3. Primera luz del dia antes de salir e1 Sol...
Amanecer (empezar a aparecer la luz del dia).

Real Academia Espaflola. Diccionario de la Lengua Espaﬁola. Vigésima
Segunda Edicio'n. Real Academia Espaﬁola, 2001, Tomo 1, 90.

Arising ﬁom circumstances outside of her direct control, the protagonist sets off
on a journey that leads her through a variety of locations and experiences ultimately
reaching a heightened awareness of her self. While traveling with the band to play at
festivals, the tour is abruptly halted in Zaragoza due to the (unknown) incarceration of
Fernando, the lead singer. While this proves to be a difﬁcult and trying period for Alba,
at the same time it is the much-needed blessing in disguise. She is propelled to actively
take control of her needs and desires, while she negotiates her life, alone, both inside
(during permitted visitation) and outside (in her professional life) of this patriarchal
structured terrain.

The second part of the novel, weighing heavily on the informative as opposed to
novelistic, depicts the life of Fernando in prison. This particular part of the novel is
enrichened by the fact that Grij alba was granted access to speak with prisoners
incarcerated at the penitenciary on the outskirts of Mardrid, Navalcamero. Her inquiry
focused on their experiences and social reality within the space of the prison. Not only
did she obtain the perspective of the male prisoners, but also she was also able to interact
with the female visitors, ranging from mothers to girlfriends”. Her primary research

required that she travel from Madrid by the public bus “Centro Penitenciario Madrid 11”,

 

92 During a personal interview Grijalba commented that the majority of the visitors at Navalcamero (that
she observed) were women. According to the author, it was exceedingly rare that a father visit his son in
prison.

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the only bus that reaches that destination. Grij alba’s experiences with the other women
(both on the bus and within the space of the prison) are reﬂected in the narrative and lend
the novel a sociological angle. This section, furthermore, describes the downfall of
Fernando and his transformations, as he is dispossessesed of his commodity value. His
incarceration stems from a nocturnal rendezvous between himself and Monica, the lead
singer of the Monaguillash. While at the hotel — unbeknownst to his girlfriend Alba — not
only does he indulge sexually, but also after consuming a plethora of drugs and alcohol
he loses control and destroys property. Yet again he assumes no responsibility for his
actions, citing again his fame, which relieves him from all culpability.

In consideration of the goods that Alba selects to consume and consequently form
a basis for her subjectivity — image of celebrity of Femando- it is signiﬁcant to note the
transformations in her desire. Whereas her boyﬁiend was a sexy well-known musical
icon, within the proxemics of prison, this changes as he becomes enfeebled losing the
vitalization and magnetic appeal of his former self. The romanticized rock and roll
aspect of Fernando, which attracted Alba has faded: “Le miro a la cara y vio que, de
golpe, habia envejecido. Miles de arrugas rodeaban sus ojos, las oj eras eran inmensas y
estaba muy palido, demacrado, pero no como a ella 1e gustaba, no tenia urr apice de
glamour siniestro, sino mas bien la cara de un anciano mal conservado” (117). As
Fernando was not awarded a legal appeal, due to the negligence of his attorney, he was
ordered to be conﬁned for a minimum of one and half years. While imprisoned, Alba
initiates the process of the re-conﬁguration of her life. Prior to the incarceration, Alba
had toyed with the idea of perhaps leaving her day job and devoting her life to music with

Asian Vibes. This, however, became an unreality as she begins to inundate herself with

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work: “De lunes a viemes tenia que lidiar con el universo jefe de tele-sushi, peliculas en
version original, compactos de trip hop, Goran Begrovic y Kronos Quartet y ropa de
Homeless, Amaya Arzuaga y, a veces, Prada, en el que Vivian sumidos sus compaﬂeros”
(123). Finished sacriﬁcing herself for Fernando, Alba is free to explore other
contingencies for the basis of her identity. And most importantly, she does not displace
these feelings onto another man, but rather she devotes her energies to her self-
improvement. It is interesting to note Alba’s position in the multinational: public
relations agent. Working in this capacity, Alba is the person in charge of constructing
images and marketing the goods. Through artful communication, she devises and
disseminates the representation desired by her client.

The longer Fernando spends in prison, the more time Alba has to contemplate her
situation and her feelings, or perhaps, change of sentiments towards her boyfriend. As
the time passes, the powerful image of him etched into her memory clashes with reality:
“Alba no le reconocio: estaba encorbado, arrastraba los pies. Sus andares que no tenian
nada que ver con esa mezcla entre chuleria y savoir faire de pasarela que tanto morbo 1e
habian dado hacia solo unos meses. Estaba derrotado y aquello no habia hecho mas que
empezar” (152). Upon the termination of her “vis a vis” (visitation with sexual
privileges which they did not take advantage of) Alba exits the area in the company of
other inmates’ wives/ girlfriends. However, before leaving the facility, she turns to glance
at Fernando only to see him “mirando el culo de Samantha” (151), an action that under
normal circumstances would have provoked intense jealousy. Within the proxemics of
the prision, Alba’s feelings mutate; she experiences “una ola de tranquilidad, de felicidad

sin estridencias” (151), sentiments that have been foreign to her. The manifestation of

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these feelings leads her to an awakening: since Fernando has been incarcerated, she has
felt liberated and “en general, mucho mejor” (152). Not only does she not have to
concern herself with his philandering ways, but also, for the ﬁrst time, their positions are
ironically reversed:
...Alba tenia que reconocer ante si misma (jamas lo haria ante los demas)
que el hecho de que Fernando estuviera encerrado y dependiera totalmente
de ella, le habia dado la vida. Ya no tenia que estar alerta para que no se
enrollara con otra; no hacia falta trasnochar, vigilar, maquinar estrategias
para evitar que Fernando la sustituyera por una nueva. Pero lo mejor,
pensaba Alba, era que su novio en ese momento dependia de ella para casi
todo. . .(152)
While Alba still loved Fernando, she arrives at the realization that she does not need him
“también le necesitaba cada vez menos” (171). He still remains one of her primary
concerns, but in a different mode. “Ya no tenia esa ansiedad, ese temor insano a medic
camino entre el miedo a perderle, la posibilidad de que encontrara a otra que le gustara
mas que ella o la certidumbre de que si salia de casa habia muchas posibilidades de que
regresara dos dias después, sin dar demasiadas explicaciones” (166). Instead, Alba
concerns herself with making her own life and discovering her own talents. While
Fernando is incarcerated, Alba’s existence transforms radically: “Habia aceptado e1
pequeﬂo ascenso que le habian oﬁ'ecido en la agencia y eso queria decir que ganaba mas
dinero pero también que tenia que trabajar muchos ﬁnes de semana, festivos y alargar su

horario hasta lo inhurnano. A Alba no le importaba demasiado” (166).

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At the inception of the novel, Alba represented the traditional unspeaking subject.
Yet, she assumes a new character by way of contemplation and making life choices.
Whereas her subjectivity was emblematic of female processes and sentimentality, now
her messages reﬂect her afﬁrmed role as author of her life. Alba explicitly reveals herself
as creator by way of thoughtful expressions of identity, authenticity, and self-ownership.
In this vein, Alba generates a personal narrative that destabilizes the relationship between
gender and identity. No longer passively consuming the celebrity of Fernando, she
realizes that not only is life possible without her boyfriend but it is also more peaceful:
Se daba cuenta de que la vida sin Fernando era posible y ademas mucho
mas tranquila. Incluso, cuando alguno de esos compaﬁeros cercanos a los
treinta y cinco, con zapatos de Prada, pantalon Levis Engineering Jeans,
camisa Carthart, media melena, chalet en Las Rozas, Saab azul o negro y
veraneo en Kenia la invitaba a cenar en el Nodo 0 en el Suntory y
empezaba a pensar en la posibilidad de una vida acomodada” (172).
In this context, consumption is constitutive of identity (Campbell 1987; McCracken
1988) and possessions, thus, ﬁmction as an extended sense of self. Alba as consumer uses
goods to construct and communicate her identity, to relate to people and groups, to mark
social differences, to seek comparative status, and to pursue emotional and aesthetic
pleasures. Identity construction and expression rest on the quest for difference: "a need is
not a need for a particular object as much as it is a 'need' for difference (the desire for
social meaning)" (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 45). Without regard to the
proxenrics, Alba draws from all available global and local, new and old sources as she

uses products to position herself in the local age, gender, and social class. In this process

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of identity construction she confronts tensions: to be like others (her privileged friends
from work) yet also different. On one hand, Alba maneuvers within the proxemics of the
Salamance neighborhood, a wealthy, upper class district. However, she differentiates
herself from her privileged friends through her hippy body dressing and subversive
dreadlocks.

Negotiation of Alba’s identity through consumption rests on the meanings of
objects and practices: exotic food, a luxury vehicle, and high-end fashion goods. Her
identity making process, then, is based on a double dynamic. On the one hand, objects
and consumption practices express her identity in a positive manner as belonging to a
certain social group: that of “acomodada” (172). On the other, they express identity in a
negative manner as differences and distance (to other social groups or to other members
of the same group). While some may comment that Alba is selling out to upper-middle
class aspirations via her election of consumption habits, intimately connected to her
transplantation, Alba’s change in consumption practices marks an evolution in the
production of a passive self to active self-formation. Of the options available to her, the
protagonist voluntarily made the choice to enter the multinational (cognizant of its
symbolic system) and, indeed, constructs a healthy, vigorous selﬂrood. Through
consuming material goods of distinction - those that freely ﬂoat in the social scape of this
‘imagined community’- she aligns her identity and self with individuals negotiating that
same landscape; in a similar way, she distances her subjectivity from her former reality
including Fernando. Nevetheless, she maintains her coiffure of dreadlocks, an extreme

stylistic contrast to the multinational norm.

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The third and ﬁnal part of the novel opens with F emando’s release from prison
after a year and one-half stay93 . While he had a strong desire to return to his former
celebrity self, all he could muster was domestic duties: “se pasaba el dia entero en casa:
limpiando (mas o menos), viendo la television, jugando con Iggy (el gato) y esperando a
que Alba llegara del trabajo estresadisima y harta de que él, Fernando, <<no hiciera nada
por solucionar su vida>>” (183). Ironically, he now ﬁnds himself in a powerless position
pendent of his girlfriend Alba. Instead of being surrounded by participants and players in
the musical world, after his release ﬁom prison Fernando relies on Alba and her group of
friends for company. Negotiating the barrio of Salarnanca - on of the most posh
neighborhoods in Madrid- the couple attends elegant soirees:
Cenas en casas de decoracion nrinimalista o abigarradas con elementos
e’tnicos de mercadillos carisirnos en las que gente vestida con zapatos de
Prada, bolsos de Gucci, camisetas de mercadillo, faldas vintage y vaqueros
desteﬁidos, conria sushi, cuscus biologico o pollo tandoori, bebia vinos
carisimos, hablaba de viajes exoticos, problemas ecologicos, los vaivenes
de la economia de las empresas de intemet. . .y en cuyas estanterias habia
libros de diseﬁo. .. (186-7)

In the past Fernando would never have conceived of attending a function of this sort, as

this group represented his antithesis; nevertheless, since his ingression in prison, he

remains a sad parody of his former self, which Alba points out to him”. Desiring to

 

93 Fernando was released from prison earlier than expected due to the generosity of Zeus, Alba’s wealthy
brother. Appropriating his ﬁnancial resources, Zeus made a donation to the Navalcamero penitenciary to
inﬂuence and facilitate the early release of Fernando. Unbeknownst to Alba or Fernando, this donation was
made by her brother to ease the concerns and life of Alba.

9‘ Nevertheless, it is noteworthy to mention that while Fernando feels severe discomfort in posh,
pretentious surroundings, he does come from an upper-middle class family. Yet, he has always tried to
construct his identity as the complete opposite, as a rebellious counterculture rock star.

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jump back into the music scene, F emando composes a collection of what he believes to
be top musical hits, only to hear: “- Cariflo, pero esto es el <<Love will tear us apart>>,
de Joy Division, es una broma, gno?” (184). In the attempt to prove her wrong, Fernando
performs a series of other songs, yet each time “resultaba que era una cancion
conocidisima que 6] no recordaba” (186). Feeling impotent and a poser, Fernando
decided it was best to leave behind both the musical environment and its people. It is
interesting to note that his passive attitude, in the past, would have represented paradise
for Alba, “tres aﬁos atrés ésa era la idea que tenia Alba del Paraiso: un Fernando
domesticado, que no la tuviera todo el dia a1 borde del colapso nervioso” (195), but
presently she just pitied Fernando and his unattractive state: “Efectivamente, Fernando
estaba domesticado, se acercaba bastante a la idea general del compaﬁero perfecto. Pero
claro, con la doma, habia perdido el brio que habia hecho que Alba se enamorara (0 se
obsesionara, que lo mismo da) de 61” (195). Returning from work to ﬁnd him subsumed
in MTV, (of course) without volume to avoid what he denominated “Sindrome del Plagio
Inconsciente” (195), the admiration she once held for her former celebrity boyfriend was
converted to compassion and pity. While Alba indeed constructs a subject formation in
complete opposition of her former self, much like that of Fernando, her representation is
not a parody of her past. This is due to two reasons: from the outset of the novel
(although emphatically acknowledging her obsession for Fernando) she revealed various
times her lack of desire to continue within the musical space, despite the overwhelming
encouragement from her folks. Furthermore, when her life was abruptly altered by the
incarceration of Fernando, she opted to take active control of her life and the construction

of her identity, instead of remain inert. Indeed, she does associate herself with the

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community of the multinational -— one which has expensive tastes and ﬁ'equents the
Salamanca barrio — yet, she does not conform to this image, illustrated through her
coiffure (dreadlocks) and sporting clothes that project an alternative, indie image.

The theorist Cixous, in “The Laugh of Medusa”, calls for an end of silence
instituted upon women when she proposes a feminine practice of writing that urges
women to write themselves using the ‘white ink’, the milk of the mother’s breast (251).
A plausible interpretation of this is that men cannot silence that which feeds their progeny
so they are forced to let it ﬂow in its own manner and design, be it the ‘white ink’ of the
breast or Alba’s writing of her own narrative. From the time Fernando was incarcerated,
Alba, as her name suggests, embarks upon a journey of re-awakening. Diving into her
work “como método de evasion” (192), Alba separated herself from the world of music
that “nunca 1e habia gustado demasiado y en el que, ademas, tenia que estar mintiendo
constantemente sobre el paradero de Fernando” (192). Negotiating a new terrain, Alba
also began to re-construct her concept of self. Indeed she did not stop consuming images
and symbols, but she did consume actively and use it to her advantage and further herself
professionally: “se dio cuenta de que la cantidad de horas que invertia en aquella oﬁcina
y los esfuerzos que hacia servian de muy poco si no se acompaﬁaban de una vida social
activisima con sus superiores y algunos companeros <<elegidos>>” (192). Aware of her
surroundings and their inherent patriarchal structure, Alba took advantage of these parties
to further her own desires; desires not based on being possessed by a man, rather
ﬁnancially caring for herself: “Si Alba queria que su cuenta bancaria ascendiera todos
los meses a doscientas mil pesetas daba igual como trabajara: lo irnportante era ganarse

la conﬁanza de sus superiores. Al ﬁn y al cabo, los cargos de responsabilidad también se

292

llamaban puestos de conﬁanza, por algo seria” (193). Her nomadic negotiations through
this location demonstrate the articulation of an active female subjectivity as well as the
erection and appropriation of her own language; Grijalba concurs: “Alba si podrla ser un
ejemplo de nomada. Yo creo que si, va evolucionando” (Interview 2004). While
feminist critics continue to explore how to acquire language outside of the Symbolic
order, as Cixous suggests, this system of writing from the ‘breast’ allow for an
exclusivity among women that undermines patriarchal political agendas. For instance,
while Alba did not particularly enjoy working “En realidad odiaba su trabajo: bueno,
cualquier trabajo, incluido el de tocar e1 sitar de festival en festival” (193-4), she
recognized that it was her means to independently establish herself and make possible
future dreams: “ahorrar durante unos cinco anos y después retirarse a vivir de las rentas y
de algr'rn trabajillo suelto” (194). To convert to reality these aspirations, Alba performed
for her bosses - “Siempre decia que adoraba su trabajo, que la publicidad le parecia un
arte y que los publicistas hacian una labor social muy importante” (194) - to the point of
embodying a caricature of the traditional woman. When questioned about her future
desire to have children with Fernando, Alba responded perfectly without hesitation: “la
r'rnica que podia conducirle a1 ascenso rapido. Ponia cara de mas conﬁdencia ar'rn y cierta
desazon y decia: <<Nos gustaria mucho, pero tengo un problema de esterilidad y no
puedo. Pensé en adoptar un niﬁo pero, no sé, no es lo mismo. No, estamos muy bien asi
y no necesitamos un hijo>>” (194). In contrast to her location within the techno space,
the power of the feminine makes a dramatic shift to the center within the space of the
multinational. While some may read Alba’s choices and resulting embodiment as an

adoption of a masculinist patriarchal paradigm, I do not believe that to be the case. Alba

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maintains and articulates a dual discourse to her beneﬁt. She utilizes a “set of interrelated
‘situated krrowledges’” (Braidotti Patterns of Dissonance 278) or nomadism which leads
her to ascertain and actively take control over her life, opening possibilities to achieve
that which she truly desires yet “no se lo confeso jamas a ningr'm companero” (194): to
work hard now and save so as to live her future in peace. Alba’s efforts and movements
within the territory of the multination illustrate Braidotti’s concept of the nomad and the
notion of becoming woman:
E1 nomade tiene un agudo sentido del tenitorio, pero no de su posesion.
Como bien lo seﬁala Haraway: uno debe situarse en algr'rn lugar
para poder hacer enunciaciones de valor general. Por consiguiente, el
nomadismo no es ﬂuidez sin fronteras, sino que consiste mas bien en una
aguda conciencia de no ﬁjacién de limites. Es el intenso deseo de
continuar irrumpiendo, transgrediendo. (Sujetos nomades 77)
By way of her ﬂeshing through of experiences and understanding of the spaces in which
she has traversed, Alba has acquired knowledge that permits her to work from a position
of subversion (she does work for the multinational, but it represents a means to an end).
This coupled with the knowledge that she does not need Fernando nor any other man to
construct and stabilize her identity are fundamental to an enhanced self-awareness, an
understanding that derives from her “rhizomatic” or profound contemplation that
according to Braidotti, unfolds in a “’nomadic’ style” (Patterns of Dissonance 60). That
is, the status of their relationship as the goal and endpoint of her development is called

into question by the emergence of new plot intrigues that seek to expose the

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insufﬁciencies of the old. In this vein, Felski agrees with the necessity of creating
alternative spaces for the construction of active female subjectivity. She states:
The deﬁning feature of a feminist text is a recognition and rejection of the
ideological basis of the traditional script of heterosexual romance
characterized by female passivity, dependence, and subordination, and an
attempt to develop an alternative narrative and symbolic ﬁ'amework within
which female identity can be located. (129)
While a negative portrayal was presented at the inception of the novel — a representation
of female alienation — through multiplicity of intrigues, the protagonist works to
overcome these debilitations. Alba’s unhealthy consumption of celebrity denied her the
opportunity for active self-formation and independent self-fulﬁllment. All the while she
was clinging to a relationship based on psychological dependence with a lover unable to
acknowledge women other than in relation to his own emotional and sexual interests, as
commodities. That is, she displaced her need to foreground her identity and distinguish
herself from others based on attention from a man.

The key transformation of the text — Femando’s imprisonment providing Alba the
space she needed to cultivate her self - takes the protagonist from an inert state or an
imposed alienation to a qualitatively different concept of self. Within this narrative, the
heroine maneuvering as Other among patriarchal landscapes- techno scene, penitentiary,
multinational - survives and strengthens her self. Ironically, her celebrity boyfriend
suffers, and ultimately, destroys himself. Grijalba offers a narrative of opposition
through the resistance and survival of Alba. The social and ideological constrictions,

which traditionally have deﬁned women’s roles within the social scope, are

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systematically called into question. The rupture with tradition materializes by way of the
inward recognition and rejection of the ideological basis of existing gender roles.
Furthermore, this rupture is expressed through actively displacing the fulﬁllment of
Alba’s boyfriend’s needs for hers. The shifts in physical space, from the techno scene to
the multinational, are as symbolically important to the evolutions manifesting within her
personal relationship with herself and Fernando. In this transformation, she moves
outward from the oppressive environment of the techno scene (as she experienced it) to
the spaces of the multinational, yet another patriarchal structure, but the difference is that
she relies and depends upon herself. There is a deﬁnite emphasis on autonomy as she
shifts from one mode of being to a radically altered one. Through her rejection of the
model of the traditional heterosexual couple as a means of self-deﬁnition, Alba
establishes alternative symbolic conﬁgurations that provide a locus of meaning. The
experiences she undergoes, while difﬁcult and painful, are viewed as essential stages in
her maturation process; her interactions with the world help to mold and form the
parameters of her subjectivity.

External exploration both parallels and contributes to the discovery of her interior
self. In this context, self-awareness is depicted as piece-meal and accumulative, a
trajectory of development that takes into account various steps. The unfolding of the text
is hinged on the goal of retrospective self-knowledge and understanding; as a result, the
aspects of the novel garner signiﬁcance in relation to the various developments. That is
to say, after the imprisonment of Fernando, Alba delves into discovering her own talents
and nurturing herself. This dedication led to promotions as well as a profound sense of

worth attached to her job. Not that she loves it, but rather it provides a means to achieve

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the ultimate end. Along her journey, Alba ascends to a position of more responsibility
requiring her to travel to exotic places such as England and Morocco. On one of her
business trips, she worked closely with Paul, the company’s top client. Embodying the
complete opposite of Fernando “Paul parecia un chico responsable, educado, estaba
forrado y era atentisimo con ella. . .un poco pesado para su gusto y sin demasiada chispa”
(203), the attention she receives from him, stemming ﬁ'om professional involvement yet
transforming to romantic, appeals to her as well as appears to be poetic justice: “Por una
vez un hombre (aunque no le gustara, daba igual) dejaba de prestar atencion a una chica
perfecta para atender a una mortal con defectos. Alba lo tenia claro: Paul 1e caia bien”
(202). Moreover, due to his afﬁnity for her, she was given certain privileges -— the
charge of his account, the company’s largest. Her behavior is notable; while she in no
way solicited his attention, professional or romantic, she utilizes the situation to her
advantage. That is not to say that she allows him to seduce her or vice versa to advance
further within the multinational, rather she dedicates herself to her work while basking in
the unsolicited male attention. Her colleagues, however, are not as receptive to her
promotions and even accuse her of throwing herself at Paul to secure his account. This
verbal attack resonates throughout her being, in particular due to the newfound pride she
attaches to it. Her brilliant response to a female coworker, however, further evidences
her nomadic wandering:

De todas formas, no deberias pensar que todo el mundo consigue las cosas

como tr’r: tirandose a los jefes. Supongo que no te lo podras ni imaginar,

pero también hay tias que logramos ir ascendiendo poco a poco por

méritos propios. Si no puedes sorportarlo y necesitas pensar que

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escalamos puestos con tus rrrismos métodos es tu problema, pero a mi no

me metas en tu mismo saco porque somos muy distintas. (223)
While Alba is aware her promotion by Paul does not stem from her professional merit,
she also recognizes that she does not directly nor indirectly pander for his attention as a
means of ascension. The ownership of her voice highlights what Maria Lugones and
Elizabeth Spelman afﬁrm; they note that possessing a voice is “integral to leading a life
rather than being led through it” and “being silenced in one’s own account of one’s life is
a kind of amputation that signals oppressions” (Lugones and Spelman 19). Alba’s past
silence disabled her agency, for the alternative to articulating her own experience and her
own goals in her way is to live a contrived version of her self. Nevertheless, throughout
her journey, Alba gradually acquires and appropriates her own voice in accord with her
desires.

That she was given the most important account in her public relations ﬁrm
introduces a distinct series of intrigues into the mix. Responsible for the marketing and
image of Paul’s company, Fake London, Alba was required to dedicate much time and
energy to the success of the project that required travel to London. Indeed, as her
professional devotion to this client intensiﬁed, her identity became inextricably linked to
the space of the multinational:

Lo de la cuenta de Fake London la tenia obsesionada; después de la
conversacién con Sara estaba convencida de que tenia que hacer todo lo
posible para que aquello saliera bien. A medida que iba investigando y

metiéndose en el asunto se daba cuenta de que ese trabajo le apetecia cada

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vez mas y ademas tenia la corazonada de que podia conseguir su obj etivo,

que no era tan diﬁcil como habia pensado. (227)
While Alba received pleasure actively creating her subjectivity vis-a-vis the consumption
of elements central to the multinational, her boyﬁiend Fernando spins further out of
control, consuming a hefty array of chemical enhancements — alcohol, marijuana, and
anti-anxiety pills such as lexatin — and (ironically) being consumed by his paranoid
jealousy of Alba and her movements. His state of being, far from pleasurable, provides
Alba with a sense of relief and also poetic justice. The narrative voice elaborates:
“Habia instantes en los que se sentia feliz, satisfecha de que la justicia poética se
irnpusiera y Fernando pudiera entender (por propia experiencia) lo que ella habia sentido
cuando tardaba dos dias mas de lo previsto en volver de una gira o si no la llarnaba a la
hora que habia quedado. Pero su satisfaccién no era plena.” (228). Interestingly, Alba
recognizes that their situations are ironically reversed; while she does not wish this
feeling of impotence on anyone, it does lead to ﬁrrther ‘rhizomatic’ contemplation
regarding her own state of affairs. For the ﬁrst time she consciously noted the message
her subconscious has been attempting to send her for months: “A 10 mej or deberiarnos
dejarlo” (229). While these words - a rupture in the relationship - appeared ﬁightful to
Alba for years, to the point that she tolerated emotional negligence and abuse to not hear
them from Fernando, recently they hinted at liberation:

La ruptura era algo en lo que nunca habia querido pensar seriamente. Le

dolia demasiado y para evitarla, para conseguir que Fernando no llegara

nunca a decir esas cinco palabras, habia aguantado, aguantado y

aguantado, hasta limites que ella nrisma, obj etivarnente, hubiera

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censurado. Pero desde hacia algr'm tiempo, 1a ruptura 1e empezaba a

parecer una liberacion y el miedo habia cambiado de bando. Ahora Alba

estaba aterrorizada por Fernando. (229)
The evolution of her feelings towards Fernando evidences a key transition in her self.
Her porous character results complex and contradictory as she undergoes the process of
sorting through mixed messages. Alba experiences sensations of female empowerment
and liberation juxtaposed with dependence. This paradox stems ﬁ'om her participation
within the culture of the techno scene; it is a culture of consumption, in her experience,
that positions women as both commodities and consumers. Hence, she negotiates her
presence within the space of the multinational in new and ambiguous ways, whereby the
existence of her shifting consciousness is made concrete in moments of contradictory
experience.

Alba’s goal is change, and this requires that she take responsibility for her own
life and actions. A patriarchal society expects women to be totally giving and available,
downplaying their own needs, ambitions, and desires, as well as fears and guilts. In
consuming the techno scene and the celebrity of her boyﬁiend, Alba repressed natural
ambitions opting for martyrdom. With the advent of Femando’s incarceration, Alba
arrives at the realization of her improper desiring. This working knowledge in
conjunction with her experiences inside and outside of the techno location impulsed a
willingness to act on behalf of her self and her respective desires. It is noteworthy that
her business trip to London marks a culminating point in the potential separation between
Alba and Fernando. The night before her departure, the couple made plans to dine out on

Calle Barbieri, an evening that was quashed by Femando’s over indulgence in

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pharmacological enhancements, which left him in a chemically induced stupor. Stood
up, worrisome Alba returns home to ﬁnd her boyﬁiend, yet again, passed out. Her worry,
nevertheless, quickly converted to intense anger, however, she gathered her energies to
focus on her advancement when she really wanted to provoke a heated argument with
him: “nga que? Si no se va a enterar de nada. Estara hasta arriba de pastillas y me va
a poner mas histérica. . .ademas pues no, mej or no porque podemos estar discutiendo
hasta las tantas y hoy tengo que dormir bien, que manana me espera un dia ﬁno. Que
duerrna o que haga lo que le dé la gana, a mi ya me la suda” (235). Effectively, Alba
does not subordinate her interests or energies for those of Fernando. While her sense of
self and perhaps of her femininity may be contradictory, nevertheless as Weedon
contends: “. . .only a conscious awareness of the contradictory nature of subjectivity can
introduce the possibility of political choice between modes of femininity in different
situations and between the discourses in which they have their meaning” (87). Alba and
her body, as a subject in process, are sites of potential revolution as she battles to deﬁne
her femininity and social role while adding meaning to her experiences.

Within the location of the multinational, Alba’s subjectivity is in the process of
active formation. This is achieved via ﬂeshing through a multiplicity of experiences and
appropriating the knowledge gleaned to her advantage. An intrigue that portends ﬁrrther
ambiguity and provokes profound questioning on Alba’s part is the interest her
“superj efe” (240) Paul takes in her. While ﬂattered by the attention — something she feels
unaccustomed to — at the same time, she feels overtly manipulated by his interests. That
is, upon arriving in London — a business trip that was to last for the weekend- she and her

boss Santiago are told that due to issues with the marketing boss, they will have the

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weekend ﬁee and begin business on Monday. While Santiago was pleased with the extra
time — days he could devote to perusing the high-end shopping district- Alba felt

‘6

otherwise: .. .no estaba tan entusiasmada, estaba practicamente segura de que Paul sabia
lo del cambio de dia de la reunion hacia mucho tiempo y que les habia obligado air antes
para pasar unos dias con ella” (241). In particular, Alba remains concerned because she,
now, would have no excuse to not attend an overnight trip-hop festival with him. It is
interesting to note that this situation provokes contemplation not only for Alba but also
Paul. He wonders why this intelligent and attractive woman has captivated him so, as she
is not his usual type: “. . .objectivarnente podria tener bastante que envidiar a las decenas
de pijas londinenses de metro ochenta, cincuenta y cinco kilos, pelo rubio perfecto,
veintipocos aﬁos y educacion exclusiva que andaban detras de él desde que se habia
separado por r'rltima vez” (242-3). Parallely, for the protagonist this situation with Paul
brought to mind Barbie dolls, gifts her grandmother brought her from the United States
that sparked interest and caused jealousy among her friends, as in Spain they were
commodities not readily available. She contemplates how she carried the doll around
school allowing her ﬁiends to play with her Barbie: “A ella no le costaba ningr'rn
esfuerzo porque siempre habia odiado las mufrecas y la Barbie 1e parecia una hortera y
mucho mas abunida que el Exin Castillos, que era con lo que se pasaba horas. . .Y ademés
se sentia muy culpable por no apreciar eso que todo el mundo envidiaba. . .”(243). This
timely reﬂection can be read as resistance to aligning herself with the patriarchal beauty
cannon and her deﬁance of stereotypical gender expectations. Furthermore, while Alba

understands that she is a commodity, she also notes that she does not have to completely

buy into this dominant structure; rather in doing so, she stands to lose the autonomy that

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she has acquired since Femando’s incarceration. Perhaps most importantly, she arrives at
a deeper understanding of her desires and needs:
...se acordo de Fernando y se dio cuenta de que no le echaba de menos,
que incluso estaba feliz de encontrarse fuera de casa, sin tener que
aguantar los cambios de humor y la desidia de su novio. Por primera vez
en muchos aﬁos se daba cuenta de que no estaba enamorada de nadie. Ya
no queria a Fernando y, por muchos esfuerzos que hiciera, a Paul parecia
que tampoco. (243)
While admitting to herself that she in not in love with neither Fernando nor Paul, she still
ﬁnds herself in ambiguous terrain. Indeed she accepted a dinner invitation to the hippy-
chic Momo, a restaurant frequented by celebrities such as Vanessa Paradis, Kate Moss
and Jade Jagger, which placed her in a fashion quandary. Alba resolved the dilemma and
decided to sport “un pantalon de seda salvaje verde y un top de espejitos y patchwork
hindr’r” (247), as she wanted to fabricate a carefully chosen image: a hippie yet trendy
look that did not portend a night of passionate sex. After crafting her image, in which she
concomitantly commodiﬁes herself as a culturally sophisticated and worldly 'woman,
Alba meets up with Paul, only to become repulsed by his treatment of her. While she
realizes that vis-a-vis consumption choices she fabricates herself as a type commodity,
she did not create a sexually charged self. Hence, Alba becomes offended by Paul’s
presumptuous advances:
Instantes después de salir del hotel, Paul 1a habia rodeado por la cintura y
Alba no sabia como reaccionar. Ese exceso de conﬁanza la molestaba,

pero tampoco 1e parecia logico decirle que la soltara. Un par de veces, al

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cruzar una calle o sortear algr'rn obstaculo, Alba se habia zafado de la

mano aprisionadora, pero a los pocos segundos volvia a estar ahi entre la

cintura y la cadera, demasiado cerca del glr'rteo. (248)
Along her journey from passivity to active self-formation, Alba has ﬂeshed through
myriad experiences to uncover her true desires and likewise act on behalf of her needs.
The episode that occurred in route to Momo serves as a ﬁrrther experience that awakens
the protagonist; uncomfortable and offended by Paul’s advances and his “mano
aprisonadora” (248), while Alba does not access her voice, skirting his advances when
possible, she does become angry with herself, thinking: “No, si a este paso, termino
casandome con él por no decirle que no a nada, con la edad me estoy volviendo mas
gilipollas” (248). Reﬂecting upon her silence as well as the repercussions on her career if
she were to break it, Alba heads down the path to reclaim that from which she has been
disinherited. In the middle of dinner, Alba excuses herself and retreats to the bathroom
where she has a revelation; after vomiting her meal — a moment in which she felt a
special afﬁnity with Fernando — she told herself: “Cuando suba tengo que decirle a Paul
lo que piensa, no puedo estar con tonterias... Voy a dejarme de mentiras...la mentira
siempre se vuelve en tu contra” (252). Evidenced by her admission, in acquiring and
ﬂeshing through knowledge, Alba is able to express her awareness via self-possession.
Upon revealing to Paul — who reacted quite well because he was convinced that with
patience he would end up conquering her - that she had no romantic interest in him, Alba
experienced an overwhelming sense of relief and tranquility, such that she slept the entire
night and awoke with more energy that she had felt in years: “Era como si la hubieran

desenterrado. Estaba pletorica sin motivo”(254). This moment of tranquility was

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interrupted by dark thoughts of Fernando; she wondered why he had not called her nor
answered the telephone at home, and this line of questioning temporarily displaced her
peace as jealousy surged to the foreground. Nevertheless, her curiousity and fears were
eased after reading the morning edition of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
<<Muere Fernando Duarte, el lider del grupo Asian Vibes. E1 guitarrista y
cantante de una de las bandas mas punteras del panorama independiente
espaiiol fallecio la tarde de ayer en su domicilio de Madrid. Fuentes
cercanas a la familia aﬁrman que la causa del deceso fue una sobredosis
involuntaria de barbitr'rricos y alcohol. Agencia Efe.>>. (254-255)
Within minutes of reading the obituary, Alba receives a telephone call from Pablo, who
was concerned with her reaction to the news of Femando’s death. Yet she admits to him,
“No, de verdad que estoy bien. No entiendo por qué, pero por primera vez en un monton
de tiempo me siento muy bien, muy tranquila. . .Te lo digo a ti porque a otro me daria
vergiienza, pero es como si me hubiera liberado de algo, no sé, no puedo
evitarlo. . .”(255). Within hours of this admission, Alba returns to Madrid to attend the
wake; seeing Fernando in his black velvet Dolce & Gabanna suit, Alba can only murmur
“jQué guapa esta'!” (256), thinking about how favorable the state of rigor mortis was, an
ironic reﬂection that she also makes at the opening of the novel. In the distance she heard
Femando’s mother pray that he rest in peace, to which Alba could only reply: “<<Si, ya

era hora, por ﬁn descanso en paz>>” (256).

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Conclusions:

As evidenced by the nomadic wanderings of the protagonist Alba, martyrdom not
only transmits a negative message but also represents a perverse manner of expressing
herself and gaining control of her life. The journey to self-awakening illustrates an
attempt to (re)present and reassemble a female embodiment that in the past was given.
While consumed by the techno scene and celebrity image of her boyfriend, Fernando,
Alba keeps an ethic of silence. Her experiences within this territory unveil the
contradictory reality of consumption, the results of which produce an unhealthy subject.
This isolates her from her organic self and prevents her ﬁ'om creating an active female
subjectivity. However, in her passage from one location to another — the tenitory of
techno to that of the multinational, she does not annhilate her subjectivity but rather re-
conﬁgures it, invoking a self who is not terriﬁed of solitude, a subject who is individual
yet connected. Alba expresses an empowered ﬁguration. Her actions are not a rebellion
but an essential to speak the truth of her self. Instead of placing her focus on controlling
the environment surrounding her, she acts within and becomes part of an ‘imagined
community’ of the multinational, that in complex and contradictory modes offer her the

opportunity to actively create female subjectivity and experience a sense of autonomy.

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Chapter VI: Interconnections

“It’s our memory that connects us”,
Sonia Sanchez qtd. in Baumgardner and Richards, 67

Three contemporary Spanish women writers, six female protagonists, myriad of
cultures of consumption yielding in divergent representations of female subjectivity: are
the narrativized realities portrayed disparate images or interconnected vignettes of female
identity? While the three authors have lived distinct personal narratives and have
pursued dissimilar paths in many spheres, the tie that binds Lucia Etxebarria, Gabriela
Bustelo, and Silvia Grij alba remains their negotiation of female subjectivity through the
optic of cultures of consumption. Each, in her own manner, portrays the female subject
and her becoming; this process is intimately linked to her maneuverings through the
consumer realm, selection of particular goods and codes, and subsequent re-appropriation
of goods. Indeed the mode in which each author cultivates female subjectivity is distinct;
nevertheless, each etches protagonists who negotiate meaning. By way of the various
protagonists’ appropriation of particular goods (tangible or abstract), they associate with
a speciﬁc ‘imagined community’. The dynamic relationships occurring among the
protagonists and the consumer reahn result in the construction of meaning and
transmission of codes, legible to the masses. It goes beyond symbols of simply images of
pleasure. Rather, through consumption each protagonist navigates a multiplicity of codes
in the journey of becoming an active female subject, an agent with potential to enact

change and evolve. Furthermore, in the case of some of the protagonists, there may exist

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liberatory potential stemming from the autonomous self-creation vis-a-vis the consumer
realm.

The process of becoming for each of the protagonists is also hinged on the
continuous interrogation of the hegemonic system and conventional gender roles. Again
through divergent means, each protagonist, by way of the construction of her subjectivity
through the speciﬁc accoutrements of the culture of consumption, questions her identity
and that of Woman within the traditional patriarchal model. Cognizant of the power
structure, each moves through spaces (those with which they associate) confecting their
identity according to will, yet conscious of how their position relates to that of the power
paradigm. The commonality amongst these women is their utilization of experiences and
ﬂeshing through of memories to enact change and arise at a higher understanding of their
selﬂrood. In this sense, according to the postulations of Braidotti and her theory of
nomadic subjectivity, the protagonists arrive to embody the fenrinist female subject who
has abandoned longing for salvation, and instead has focused on regeneration either
through subversion of the power structure or working within it to her advantage. Either
way, these various portrayals evidence the dynanric multiplicity of female subjectivity.

Due to personal narratives, experiences with global economies, and their notions
of female identity, Grij alba, Bustelo and Etxebarria may have, perhaps, been inﬂuenced
to examine female subjectivity in conjunction with cultures of consumption within
contemporary Spain from various platforms. What remains clear, though, is their
dialogue with the international via the inclusion of global brands, locales, markets,
cultural trends, and use of the English language in their narrative. Silvia Grijalba, for

instance, explores the movement of the female subject, Alba, within the techno scene as

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well as the multinational. She traces the evolutions in the identity of Alba as she passes
from one territory to the other, obviously intimately linked also to the position of her
boyfriend, Fernando. It is interesting to note that these two territories are ones in which
Grijalba herself has profound knowledge: the capitalist empire from her work at the
newspaper El Mundo and the musical landscape through her direct and indirect
participation in that area (playing, djing, and reporting). The identity of the protagonist is
closely related to her surroundings and that which she consumes within the two
territories; in the techno scene - drugs, music, the celebrity of her boyfriend, unhealthy
obsession — and in the multinational, she experiences more power (linked to the demise
of Fernando) and consumes higher-end labels while maintaining hybridization via her
indie look. Most importantly, though, is that as she traverses the two areas, both
patriarchal in nature, she gains a deeper understanding of herself and her own needs.

This translates into the construction of an active subjectivity and awareness of self,
despite the constraints inherent to the power system. Alba nomadically wanders, utilizing
her memory and experiences as guide, and arrives at a position of peaceful
understanding: she rejects the notion of a savior and begins her own process of
rejuvenation. Grijalba’s portrayal of female subjectivity opens the possibility for the re-
deﬁnition of Woman.

Likewise, Bustelo traces the construction of female subjectivity through the locus
of consumption. Unlike the cultures of consumption depicted in Grij alba’s novel,
Bustelo examines the space of the underground life of the movida madrilefla juxtaposed
by the consumption of drugs, music, high-end goods, dancing, and the gaze. Similar to

Grijalba, Bustelo explores the relationship among female identity and consumption, as

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well as the process of becoming achieved via contemplation yielding a more heightened
awareness of self (Braidotti). Dissirnilar to Grijalba, Bustelo toys with the conventional
conception of Woman — that of the femme fatale — to interrogate and subvert the
hegemonic prescriptions for gender norms. Within the underground scene of the movida
nightlife, Vania ﬂits among various locales, voluntarily playing into the game of stalker,
her identity manifesting in a chameleon-like manner. Nearly always highly sexually
charged, Vania moves among the ‘authentic’ spaces of the bars, displays herself
(knowing she is a commodity) for the gaze, and feels empowered. Indeed she
participates in the game, yet her narrative does not call for nor need a male, but rather she
objectiﬁes the masculine by way of the power she ascertains through the image she
appropriates and projects. Entangled by the ‘mania persecutoria’, vulnerable videotapes,
two-way nrirrors, and the knowledge that she is under constant surveillance, Vania does
not render passive; she actively creates her selﬂrood and ﬂuctuates from positions of
‘mirada’ to that of ‘nrirona’. Working from a position of power, Vania uses her gaze to
unveil the stalkers and as such erases the constraints and subdues their power. The novel
playfully toys with the creation of female identity in a world constructed and ruled by
hegemonic norms. Likewise, it unveils the plethora of consumer goods and their
relationship in the construction of female subjectivity. Vania enters into the game
through partaking in the consumer realm. These participations evidence nomadic
wanderings that engage Vania to question and manipulate the symbolic to her advantage
while freely creating her selﬂrood; as such, she embodies the feminist female subject and

a distinct potential for the redeﬁnition of Woman.

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Etxebarria’s narrative presents diverse portraits of the three Gaena sisters and
their construction of identity contingent upon consumption of territory and the respective
accoutrements. While distinct in identity, the commonality among the Gaena siblings is
_ their quest for knowledge, for an understanding and acceptance of who they are. This is
arrived upon by way of their individual contemplations of experiences, ﬂeshing through
history, their understanding of the power paradigm, as well as an understanding of
themselves. Divergent in representation, the youngest, Cristina, incamates counterculture
and interrogates hegemonic norms while at the same time working within the system to
her beneﬁt. Moving from the realm of the multinational to the bar scene, Cristina elected
to have more control over her time and body space. Despite her knowledge, she was
denied access due to despotic practices, ﬁrrtherrnore, within this tenitory, her body felt
inorganic, artiﬁcially programmed and constricted for the beneﬁt of those in the upper
echelons of the company. While recognizing the patriarchal nature of the bar, she is
cognizant that her body — as bartender — is the focus, on display for the consuming eyes;
yet, ironically she condescends their hungry looks while beneﬁting from the ﬁnancial
gain. Questioning all dominant power structures, Cristina understands herself and the
power that she possesses. She engages in nomadic thinking by way of her ‘rhizomatic’
contemplation of self and surroundings as well as active self-formation via the space of
counterculture. In distinct contrast to her younger, Rosa is programmed, digitalized, and
coded according to the tenets of capitalism and advancing technologies. She, too,
initiates nomadic contemplation by way of her interrogation of gender roles as well as the
result of being female in a male dominated economy. Colonized to believe that she had

to deny all emotion and feeling, but rather control and program her selﬂrood according to

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logic and rationalism (masculine associated qualities) to achieve success and to just be.
Working through memories and experiences, she allows herself to explore her emotions.
She is cyborg: constructed in part by technology but also human, allowed to feel at
harmony with her emotive self. The oldest sister, Ana, also presents a representation that
deviates from the other two; she is the housewife incarnate. Ana fabricates her life patch-
working together the elite brands and odd chores she must complete around the domestic
sphere, as that was what she had learned from her mother and society. Maintaining her
house of elaborate immaculate quality, as if it were uninhabited, represented a ritual
signiﬁcance; just in the same way, she constructed her self around the consumption of
very expensive and international goods. Yet there were fault lines. Ana could not be the
perfect mother, housewife, and just be. After periods of ingesting chemical cocktails —
one to wake her up and another to help her sleep- profound sadness, and utter despair,
Ana begins her own quest for identity. Abandoning all that she knew, she journeys
towards regeneration of self, a healthy one based upon her own active self-construction.
It is important to note that the consumption of high-end goods is not the factor that
caused her demise and passivity, rather the internalization of unrealistic expectations that
she herself did not know if she really desired or desired because of what she had been
taught by social and familiar discourse. In sum, all three articulate their identity via their
consumption of object and symbols; their identities are in ﬂux and evidence the
multiplicity of the female subject.

In conclusion, female identity has been grounded in theories postulated during the
Enlightenment, elaborating that Man is rational and active and Woman, his opposite, is

passive and a lack. The identity of Woman has been essentialized by the masculine

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dominated economy to signify an inferior being. Whether it manifest as mother, wife, or
daughter, She was always the other. This study, however, dismisses theories grounded in
Enlightenment thought and re-thinks the notion of woman. Through the analysis of the
various protagonists, the concept of woman has become radicalized: She is no longer an
essence, but rather She represents a multiplicity of beconrings, of female subjectivities.
This research has not proposed the destruction or overturning of the hegemonic system,
but rather proposes manners in which the female subject may negotiate an active
subjectivity, either subverting the system or working within it to her advantage. In the
postmodern era, the concept of becoming or constructing subjectivity is intimately linked
to cultures of consumption, by which each of the protagonists has negotiated meaning
and actively forged a female subject. Some of the protagonists even experienced a
libidinal return via their personal interactions with speciﬁc cultures of consumption and
their playing with various accoutrements associated. Each of the protagonists represents
an individual with a unique history and narrative; nevertheless, there exists a
commonality among these women. While wandering different paths, each embarked
upon a journey that led them to interrogate their individual selﬂrood as well as their
surroundings. Likewise, by way of their contemplation and ﬂeshing through of
experiences, the protagonists, as nomad or cyborg, work with the knowledge and traverse
spaces with more profound insight into their selﬂrood and the desire to redeﬁne the
notion of female subjectivity, rejecting essence and grounded identity. As unveiled in the
literature under discussion and exposed in the vast and intensive political, social, and
economic changes transpiring in present day Spain, there exists transformations in the

contingencies of female identity; likewise, these distinct media (literature, sociological

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surveys, inauguration of new political cycle) demonstrate the need for a re-deﬁnition in
the concept of female subjectivity, a transgression, a radicalization of Woman. To close,
this inquiry cites the scholar Sargisson whose thoughts succinctly predicate the re-
thinking of Woman, not through destruction, but rather by way of the creation of new
spatial constructs in which to engage in the negotiation and articulation of the female
subject. Sargisson afﬁrms:
Not only does the present need to be critiqued but its status, and that of
women within it, need to be questioned. Transgression of social codes, of
the concept of order, and of generic conventions all comprise elements of
a practice, which I have called radical and transgressive utopiarrism, that
seeks to subvert and exploit the ways in which our perceptions of reality
(and the concepts that enable us to make sense of reality) are constructed.
By dislocating the present, we can, I suggest, create new conceptual space
which allows challenges to the present to be made, and permits the desire
for change to become manifest and ‘meaningful’. (225)

After having read the investigation in its whole, another thought to consider is:
what is the signiﬁcance of this investigation with respect to current Spanish reality?
Indeed, there are interconnections that are grounded in the potential for the redeﬁnition
of the female subject in contemporary Spain. Of primary signiﬁcance is the change in the
political cycle. On March 14th 2004, just days after a terrorist attack at the central train
depot Atocha in downtown Madrid, the results of the elections deﬁed the predictions.
The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), led by José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero,

garnered a majority of seats in the Congress of Deputies. Their win represented a

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tremendous defeat for the governing People’s Party (PP), led into the campaign by
Mariano Rajoy and supported by the goveming Prime Minister J osé Maria Aznar. This
abrupt paradigm transformation signals that a new stage has begun, evidenced by
Zapatero’s announcement of his intention to form a minority PSOE government without a
coalition. The results of the elections are remarkable as they demonstrate a prominent
increase in electoral participation, especially among the youth, who concentrated their
support behind the PSOE leader Zapatero. The electoral outcome also implies a desire
among the Spanish society to end authoritarianism and stringent right-wing politics,
while opening the potential to recognize the plurality into which Spain has bloomed. The
stunning political transformation, ending nearly a decade of the conservative regime at
the hehn, promises the possibility of real change that undoubtedly will reverberate in the
conception of female identity. Indeed there are visible signs of this change, as well as the
evolution in women’s identity within the past decade within the proxemics of
government, multinational, and music, to name a few. The realm of music (producers
and musicians) was constructed and donrinanted by the masculine, and when there
appeared a female musician, she was the exception, not the norm. This, however, is
changing as more women participate. According to Aguilera, in Spain,
Las chicas 1e han entrado a1 rock de forma masiva y por los canales mas
marginales. La presencia femenina es especiahnente destacada en el
escaparate de la musica independiente. Desde los sellos pequeilos llegan
mozas que cantan en inglés o espaﬁol las variantes del rock y del pop.

Abanderadas de este movimiento fueron las hermanas Llanos, nr'rcleo duro

315

del grupo Dover, que crecio hasta el punto de ser ﬁchado por una

multinacional. (www.cl—mundo.es/larevista/numl77/textos/gentes2.html/)
Explicit in Aguilera’s investigation is not only signiﬁcant female participation in the
music world, but also the success female groups attain. On a political level, one only
need mention Maria Teresa Feméndez de la Vega, the very ﬁrst female Vice-President
and Minister to the President. Prior to this position, in 1996, she triumphed (along with
the ﬁrst victory of the Partido Popular) as the delegate of Jaén. Her achievements
provide motivation and sirve to dismantle barriers imposed upon the woman. Women
have also effectuated meaningful progress in the business world. According to surveys
undertaken by the Instituto de la Muj er, in the third trimester of 2004, 421,900 Spanish
women directed large companies and 138,500 Spanish women maintained direction of
small businesses with less then ten employees (Encuesta de Poblacion Activa, INE).
While these statistics may seem inferior to masculine involvement, nevertheless, they
indicate an alteration in ideology and the continued advancements on behalf of the
Spanish woman. Taking into consideration these few examples, indeed, the political shift
that transpired in March 2004 incamates the potential to yield many more modiﬁcations
in the construction of female subjectivity.

While at a paradigm level the political change holds many promises for the
recognition of enhance freedom, this transformation has also reﬂected at the individual
level. During a personal interview with Silvia Grijalba, I posed the question: (Como es
la situacion femenina actual en Espafia? In her opinion, this question was of much
signiﬁcance for the construction of female subjectivity in light of the displacement of the

PP regime by PSOE. Grijalba responded:

316

Pues. . .esta pregunta viene en un momento que para Espaﬁa es bastante
favorable porque el nuevo gobiemo de Zapatero. . .la mayoria de las
ministras son muj eres. Entonces esto esta muy bien nunca habia
ocunido. La vicepresidenta del gobiemo es mujer. . .la muj er se va
mejorando. Yo creo que si se va mejorando. Lo que pasa es que todavia
queda muchisimo por luchar. . .En Espaﬁa tenemos que recordar que
tenemos una tradicion machista de siglos y siglos. (Personal Interview
2004)

Her comments and observations regarding the propitious political changes are of
signiﬁcance as they highlight the possibilities that are opening for women, ones that offer
potential for multiplicity in subjectivity and reject essence. Yet, at the same time Grij alba
points to the work that exists for the emancipation of female subjectivity in Spain, a
country steeped in a machista tradition.

Similar to the political sphere, on both social and economic levels there also exist
many interconnections. As evidenced previously by Ingelhart’s investigation of
contemporary Spanish social values and also elucidated in Amando de Mi guel’s
sociological research, Spanish society has and continues to experience many changes that
are reﬂected in the transformation of their social values. As afﬁrmed by both of the
aforementioned scholars, the attitude of the Spaniards is becoming more secular as well
as much more tolerant. This, in consideration of the economic growth that has occurred
in Spain within the last two decades, point towards the need for a re-examination of the
identity of woman. Given the inception of the current political cycle in combination with

the evolving social values and increasing globalization of Spain, it would be fertile future

317

investigation to explore how the political, economic, and social transformations that are
presently occurring (and will continue) serve to ﬁrrther destabilize the natural notion of

Woman and open up the future possibility for female plurality.

318

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