Title: Ficciones de verdad: archivo y narrativas de vida by Patricia López-Gay
Abstract: Reviewed by: Ficciones de verdad: archivo y narrativas de vida by Patricia López-Gay Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas Semprún, Marías, Vila-Matas, Sanz, Autofiction Archive, Collection, Catacresis, Politics, Digital (Post)Production, Body, Biography, Post Franco Period, Patricia López-Gay, Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas lópez-gay, patricia. Ficciones de verdad: archivo y narrativas de vida. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2020. 244 pp. Patricia López-Gay's first book, Ficciones de verdad, represents an insightful contribution to the field of Peninsular Studies. The manuscript is a renewed meditation on the condition of the archive, bringing uncommon theoretical robustness and an innovative perspective. The author establishes an interdisciplinary dialogue with areas other than literature, such as photography, graphic arts, and performance, which provides a reliable conceptual apparatus around a trope: autoficción. This trope, which offers an alternative to the biographical genre within the world of nonfiction literature, can be of huge benefit in future discussions of Hispanism and current expressions of literature. Simultaneously, the work contributes a necessary revision of the Spanish democratic period through the analysis of different formal, thematic, and historical literary figures from the 1970s until today. López-Gay opts for the contribution of four master voices—Jorge Semprún, Javier Marías, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Marta Sanz—to depict the role of "narrativas de verdad." Ficciones de verdad is not a traditional or average academic book. It suggests studying new literary poetics, and it does so with a personal style of writing. Its structure is not homogeneous, which may imply certain methodological drawbacks. Nevertheless, the particular strength of the book is in its formal asymmetry and conceptual depth. Throughout the first two sections, "Umbral de entrada" and "Panorámica: fiebre de archivo y autoficción," the text proposes the "giro autoficcional" as a review of the "archive fever" theorized in the 90s by French critical theory and centered on personal archives in the form of pictures, maps, trips, memories, and bodies. López-Gay seems especially comfortable with the creative freedom that allows her to articulate the first theoretical block before the monographic case studies. Her wide range of references, from Cervantes to Baudelaire to Foucault, from premodern photography to contemporary Spanish photographer [End Page 138] Fontcuberta, ensures the audience's enjoyment in reading the book. An example of this is the theory-based chapter "Nuevas y viejas tecnologías del yo," in which López-Gay appropriates Foucauldian terminology to describe the current digital status of the biographical genre through the phenomenon of lifelogging. This is proposed by the author as a narcissistic return to Foucault's Ancient Greek cuidados de sí that today behaves as a "tecnología del yo cuantificado" (141). It is presented as antagonistic to the autofiction form of "epistemología del yo-cuerpo" (142), not measurable and part of a multiplicity that "selecciona, cataloga y analiza trazas de vida [de una manera] no necesariamente lineal" (139). The second part of the book, which includes the analysis of the autoficción writing of the four targeted writers, is presented as an (unconscious?) historical loop dynamic. Although the author divides the block between a first preliminary focus on the figure of Semprún and a central section on the studies of Marías, Vila-Matas and Sanz, the final chapter on Sanz resonates with the preliminary one on Semprún. Even with multiple differences between them, a common thread unites them: political drive. Thus, once we have read the book, we witness a subtle intuition: the literary excellence of Marías and Vila-Matas is devoid of political motivation to the extent that both are leading figures in the period of democratic stability and depoliticization. The return of the political that Sanz represents, according to the author, can be read as the end of the democratic normality that was questioned at the time by the exemplary antiauthoritarianism in Semprún. Starting from the books Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, Federico Sánchez se dedica de ustedes and the posthumous Ejercicios de supervivencia, López-Gay proposes Semprún's autobiographical work as a precedent of autofiction insofar as it is the result of an experience of "impotencia política...
Publication Year: 2022
Publication Date: 2022-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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