Spatial and Temporal Entrapments in the Exile Writings of Ernesto Guerra da Cal and José Rubia Barcia

Location:

Teams - Online

Time:

Wednesday 26 January 2022, 14:00–15:00

Contact:

David Miranda-Barreiro - d.m.barreiro@bangor.ac.uk

David Miranda-Barreiro, Bangor University

Click here to join the seminar

Both during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a small number of Republican exiles entered the United States. Several of them were employed at U.S. universities, a fact that has led to the consideration of their displacement as “un destierro de lujo” (a luxury exile) (Faber and Martínez-Carazo 2009). However, as Víctor Fuentes (2004) reminds us, a central theme in the writings of these intellectuals is the suffering caused by their exilic condition. Exile, commonly associated with movement, is also inherently characterised by a form of immobility. The impossibility of returning to the homeland triggers a feeling of entrapment, not just in space (locked out of their countries) but also in time. Drawing on Mari Paz Balibrea’s notion of “exilic temporality” (2007), exiles live in a suspended time, their historical clock stopped at the moment of their departure. This talk will examine images of spatial and temporal entrapment in the exile writings of two Galician authors, Ernesto Guerra da Cal and José Rubia Barcia. In doing so, it will also shed light on the experience of Republican exiles in the United States (a location that has traditionally received less critical attention), and the intersections between Galician and Spanish literature during the Second Republic and the exile that followed.