| Sumario: | Alfons Cervera's el ciclo de la memoria, a tetralogy, which consists of the novels El color del crepúsculo, Maquis, Aquel invierno, and La noche inmóvil, skilfully explores the intersection between private and public memories, and the means by which the defeated Republicans resisted the dominant Francoist memory narrative during the period 1939-2005. His depiction of the individual reaction to dominant decisions re-conceives memory as an intimate possession, replete with moral and ethical significance, and rejects its use as a political lever. In this tetralogy, memory is divorced from politics, which are only ever pertinent insofar as they impinge negatively on the individual, and is instead relocated in the private sphere where the individual and the family struggle to maintain a prohibited or taboo memory. Grounded in the sociology of memory, this article seeks to ascertain the means by which the Republicans resisted and rejected the dominant Francoist memory narrative and preserved their prohibited Republican memory, that is, to elucidate the dynamics of Republican memory. It is argued that Cervera critiques the idea of a collective memory and identity by re-defining them as continuums that require the harmonization of past and present.
|
|---|