Staging “Counter-Memories” – Marginalised Perspectives on the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist Dictatorship in the Theater of the Grandchildren's Generation
The 2019 controversial reburial of Spain’s ex-dictator Francisco Franco has shown that the critical revision of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Francoist Spain (1939-1975) has not been completed yet. One of the reasons for this is Franco’s rigid politics of memory and history, which prevented a critical examination of the nation’s belligerent past for various decades. During the peaceful transition to democracy (1975-1978), the process of coming to terms with the traumatic experience of war and dictatorship fell victim to a "pact of silence" and the 1977 Amnesty Law. It is therefore not surprising that in the following decades - at the latest with the founding of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica in 2000 - there was a "memory boom", which had a significant impact on literature.
This thesis project deals with the "theatre of the grandchildren’s generation", created after 2000, which negotiates the postmemories of the Civil War and early Francoism. The plays in question create "counter-memories" (Foucault) that open up marginalized perspectives on the two historical events. They deal with the fate of women in the anti-Francoist resistance, Franco’s "stolen children", the nameless dead in the mass graves, the repressions against the LGBTQIA+-community, as well as traumatic experiences of flight and exile.
In the course of the analyses, it will be examined how the authors give a dramatic form to a traumatic memory that has been transmitted to them by former generations. On a theoretical level, descriptive categories are to be developed, with the help of which the memorial value of dramatic plays can be adequately described. In terms of methodology, this dissertation draws on interdisciplinary studies on collective memory, counter-memory and 'postmemory', as well as on studies on drama and theatre which are linked with the field of 'memory studies'.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Cerstin Bauer-Funke and Prof. Dr. Christian von Tschilschke