Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium

The Ends of Spanish Identity

Jessica A. Folkart

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2014
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611485806
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Literature

Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium: The Ends of Spanish Identity investigates the predominant perception of liminality—identity situated at a threshold, neither one thing nor another, but simultaneously both and neither—caused by encounters with otherness while negotiating identity in contemporary Spain. Examining how identity and alterity are parleyed through the cultural concerns of historical memory, gender roles, sex, religion, nationalism, and immigration, this study demonstrates how fictional representations of reality converge in a common structure wherein the end is not the end, but rather an edge, a liminal ground. On the border between two identities, the end materializes as an ephemeral limit that delineates and differentiates, yet also adjoins and approximates. In exploring the ends of Spanish fiction—both their structure and their intentionality—Liminal Fiction maps the edge as a constitutive component of narrative and identity in texts by Najat El Hachmi, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Javier Marías, Rosa Montero, and Manuel Rivas. In their representation of identity on the edge, these fictions enact and embody the liminal not as simply a transitional and transient mode but as the structuring principle of identification in contemporary Spain.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Translations
• On the Edge: Liminality and Spanish Identity at the Turn of the Millennium
• The (Never) Ending Story: Apocalyptic Desire and the Liminal Fiction of Javier Marías’s Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí
• History Incarnate and the Liminal Body in Rosa Montero’s La hija del caníbal
• Second-Hand Identity: Limbs, Liminality, and Transplantation in Manuel Rivas’s A man dos paíños
• Ethical In-difference and Liminal Identity in Cristina Fernández Cubas’s Parientes pobres del diablo
• Scoring the National Hym(e)n: Sexuality, Immigration, and Liminal Identity in Najat El Hachmi’s L’últim patriarca
• Conclusion: The End of Liminal Fiction
• Afterword/Afterward
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Author