Working through Memory: Writing and Remembrance in Contemporary Spanish Narrative

"Working Through Memory" studies various constructions of memory in contemporary Spanish literature, evoking different aspects of a past of repression, from both the civil war and the Franco regime. Ferran analyzes narrative texts published between the 1960s and 1990s that present memory and the recuperation of a traumatic past as their main theme. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches to the study of memory, this book examines how each text presents a metanarrative reflection of the very process of memory production, of how it is written and rewritten, recounted or repressed, transmitted or forgotten. Drawing particularly on trauma theory, Ferran argues that the analyzed texts provide effective models for what Freud called "working through" memory.This process is shown to be effective as it unsettles dominant historical discourses in the present, allowing for the pain and suffering of the victims of a traumatic past to emerge through various forms of narrative disruption and fragmentation. Ofelia Ferran is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota.