Wow! eBook
Thinking Barcelona: Ideologies of a Global City (Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures): 7
Author(s): Edgar Illas (Author)
- Publisher: Liverpool University Press
- Publication Date: 31 Oct. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 1846318327
- ISBN-13: 9781846318320
Book Description
WINNER of the 2013 North American Catalan Society Prize for Outstanding Work in Catalan Studies, Thinking Barcelona studies the ideological work that redefined Barcelona during the 1980s and adapted the city to a new economy of tourism, culture, and services. The 1992 Olympic Games offered to the municipal government a double opportunity to establish an internal consensus and launch Barcelona as a happy combination of European cosmopolitanism and Mediterranean rootedness. The staging of this municipal euphoric postpolitics, which entailed an extensive process of urban renewal, connects with the similarly exultant contexts of a reviving Catalan nation, post-transitional Spain, and post-Cold War globalization. The transformation of Barcelona, in turn, contributed to define the ideologies of globalization, as the 1992 Games were among the first global mega-events that celebrated the neoliberal end of history. Three types of materials are examined: political speeches and scripts of the Olympic ceremonies, with special focus on Xavier Rubert de Ventos’ screenplay for the reception of the flame in Empuries; the urban renewal of Barcelona directed by architect Oriol Bohigas; and fictional narratives by Quim Monzo, Francisco Casavella, Eduardo Mendoza, and Sergi Pamies. This juxtaposition of heterogeneous materials pursues some type of postdisciplinary decoding linked to a strictly Marxist premise: the premise that correlations between different superstructural elements shed light on the economic instance. In this study, Barcelona emerges as a singular conjuncture overdetermined by global capitalism, but is also a space to reflect on three main problematics of postmodern globalization: the spectralization of the social in a fully commodified world; the contradiction between cosmopolitanism and the state; and, the vanishing essence of the city.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Illas’ deep and extensive knowledge of theory transforms the reflection on Barcelona’s particular experience into a significant contribution to the current critical discussion on the city as postmodern political and cultural site…Thinking Barcelona contributes decisively to the theoretical development of fields such as Catalan Studies, Hispanism, Cultural Studies, Urban Studies, Political Theory, Art History, and Architecture. –Professor Mario Santana
About the Author
Edgar Illas is Assistant Professor of Spanish, Indiana University.
