IMAGINARIES OF EMPTINESS: Exploring social imaginaries and concerns over crisis in contemporary rural Spain
Author
Soriano Oliva, Anabel
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2021
Submitted on
2021-10-25
Abstract
This thesis examines how ideas of emptiness and crisis shape the way people view contemporary rural Spain. It asks what happens when areas that are losing population or being abandoned are repeatedly described as empty in books, images, and stories. First, it treats emptiness as a historical idea. The thesis looks at demographic trends and at how the rural world is portrayed in the book "La España vacía. Viaje por un país que nunca fue". Second, drawing on Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics—especially his notion of the (re)distribution of the sensible, meaning what can become visible, sayable, and thinkable—it analyzes emptiness as an ideological tool that shapes both how these territories are imagined and how they take physical form (morphologically). The study examines different photographic perspectives in the exhibition "Sand Castles I and II" and the two main characters in the novel "Los Asqueroso" to see what these cultural works make visible. Using a hermeneutic (interpretive) method and the concept of social imaginaries (shared meanings and images that organize social life), following Cornelius Castoriadis, the thesis shows that so-called abandoned territories are products of a particular history and of established imaginaries. At the same time, they can be places where new imaginaries emerge—spaces for imagining different futures. The thesis concludes that representing rural territories as empty and in crisis largely reflects outside voices. These outsiders use the idea of emptiness to project their own hopes for redemption onto a future that has not yet arrived.
Dette speciale undersøger, hvordan idéer om "tomhed" og "krise" præger synet på nutidens landdistrikter i Spanien. Det spørger, hvad der sker, når områder, der affolkes eller opgives, igen og igen beskrives som tomme i bøger, billeder og fortællinger. Først behandles "tomhed" som en historisk idé. Specialet ser på demografiske udviklinger og på, hvordan det rurale Spanien skildres i bogen "La España vacía. Viaje por un país que nunca fue". Dernæst, med afsæt i Jacques Rancières æstetik—særligt hans begreb om (om)fordelingen af det sanselige, dvs. hvad der kan blive synligt, siges og tænkes—analyseres "tomhed" som et ideologisk redskab, der former både, hvordan disse områder tænkes, og hvordan de får fysisk form (morfologisk). Analysen ser på forskellige fotografiske perspektiver i udstillingen "Sand Castles I and II" og på de to hovedpersoner i romanen "Los Asqueroso" for at forstå, hvad disse kulturelle værker gør synligt. Med en hermeneutisk (fortolkende) metode og begrebet sociale forestillinger (fælles betydninger og billeder, der organiserer et samfund), inspireret af Cornelius Castoriadis, viser specialet, at såkaldt forladte områder både er produkter af en bestemt historie og af etablerede forestillinger, men samtidig kan fungere som steder, hvor nye forestillinger opstår—rum for at forestille sig andre mulige fremtider. Specialet konkluderer, at fremstillingen af landdistrikter som tomme og i krise i høj grad bæres af udefrakommende stemmer, som bruger tomhedsideen til at projicere deres egne håb om forløsning ind i en endnu ikke realiseret fremtid.
[This apstract has been rewritten with the help of AI based on the project's original abstract]