Queerfeminist Strategies for the Reconstruction of Spanish Memories of the Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship in El cuarto de atrás (1978) and Cartas a María (2015)

Abstract

Queerfeminist strategies in the reconstruction of memories, such as performative uses of fantasy in (auto)biographical (non)fiction texts, can bring out what has been repressed by androcentric narratives of History. Through memory dispositives, which trigger frictions between past and present, fiction and reality, creators manage to confront trauma. This is illustrated by close reading two works dealing with (post)memories of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship: Carmen Martín Gaite’s novel El cuarto de atrás (1978) and Maite García Ribot’s documentary film Cartas a María (2015). While Martín Gaite navigates through her own fictionalized memories, García Ribot reconstructs her grandfather’s exile.