1.6 The writings
1.6.1 Style, content, and availability
This section will explore the style, content, and availability of Aranguren’s, Zambrano’s, and Aguirre’s work, which need to be considered in order to better understand the project of personal and socio-political development put forward by these authors, as well as the reach and significance of their ideas.
Aranguren is a fertile writer who writes on a variety of topics, especially religion, ethics, and socio-political issues. Aranguren starts his trajectory with a largely descriptive style, which Gracia, in relation to his analysis of d’Ors work, describes as “prosa científica de las humanidades” (1996: 27). As he matures intellectually and politically, his expression changes accordingly into a more inquisitive, digressive, personal, and dialogical style. Books, journals, and newspaper articles are his preferred means of expression. A number of lectures in both the academic and the public domain bear witness to his vocation as teacher, and to his proximity with his public or readers. All in all, his style is clear, coherent, and
communicative in an effort to reach the greatest number of readers possible, and to awaken their interest and critical attitude.
His regular newspaper articles coupled with his personal circumstances and his relation with the regime have contributed to making him a well-known intellectual with a considerable readership. Moreover, since 1994 the availability of his intellectual production has increased with Feliciano Blázquez’s publication of his complete works. There are also various secondary texts which introduce, discuss, and analyse Aranguren’s work, or aspects of it, especially his views on religion and ethics (see Gracia, 1996: 161; see also Chapter Three). Despite Aranguren’s prolific and wide-ranging career, he is probably best known for the series of articles published after his death as a result of the controversy between Javier Marías and Aranguren’s family and friends regarding Aranguren’s role and sympathies during the Francoist regime (Javier Marías, 1999). Although his role and impact on the process of Transition is widely recognised, the extent of the research on Aranguren’s interest in politics has been extremely limited. To my knowledge, only Victoria Camps and Carlos Soldevilla focus on this aspect of Aranguren’s work (see 1997: 181-189; 2004: 123- 143 respectively). This thesis aims to reveal and elucidate the political dimension of Aranguren’s work and its relationship to CT.
Zambrano is probably the most prolific of the three, although her works are fragmentary, disperse, and elusive, reflecting the element of instability present almost throughout her life. Her style boasts an attractive simplicity, not simpleness, full of poetic and spiritual resonances because the focus of her reflection is not so much theoretical as it is existential and experiential, as we shall see (see Gómez Blesa, 2006: 36). She relies heavily on the use of symbols because she aims to communicate at different and progressively simultaneous levels, inviting the reader to consciously submerge himself in a fruitful and personal process of creation of meaning28. In recent years, particularly with the celebration
of the hundredth anniversary of her birth in 2004, Zambrano has sparked popular interest which has resulted in an extensive number of publications on her works29. These include
several doctoral theses, which, more or less successfully, have offered readings of different aspects of her thought30. Incidentally, Aranguren himself has supervised one such thesis
entitled “La huida de Perséfone. María Zambrano y el conflicto de la temporalidad”
28 In this sense, the Fundación María Zambrano (Vélez-Málaga) has fulfilled and continues to fulfil the task of promoting and preserving her legacy, as well as progressively publishing her remaining unpublished work.
29 In addition to this, in 2004 a film which portrays her later life is released, bearing witness to the popularity of this author. The film in question is entitled María querida and it is directed by José Luis García Sánchez.
(Eguizábal Subero, 1994). Two of the theses, “El pensamiento político y social de María Zambrano” and “Maria Zambrano: Política e Historia”, are dedicated to the political aspect of her thought, although they focus on her early writings (Salguero Robles, 1994; Paniagua, 1997 respectively). Some articles analyse her political contribution from different perspectives, most notably “Una lectura marxista de la obra de María Zambrano” and “María Zambrano y la guerra civil”, although, again, their focus is her early work (Dorang, 1991; Robles Carcedo, 1991, respectively; see also Ortega Muñoz, 2001: 8-9). The purpose of the present thesis, nevertheless, is to analyse her political thought, not limited to the early and overtly political years, but to the entirety of her work, and interpret her views and evolution in the light of Heideggerian philosophy and in relation to CT.
Aguirre’s publications are, on the other hand, less extensive (see Herralde, 2006: 16). Except for a very limited number of smaller contributions to the debate on religion during the time he exercised his role as a priest, no literary work of his own is produced until after the end of the regime, and, even then, the quantity remains modest. This probably accounts for the fact that despite his importance as an influential intellectual and as a socialite, there are hardly any materials analysing his intellectual contributions; but his influential task as a translator, and editor-in-chief during the early 1970s at Taurus, a publishing house located in Madrid, should not be overlooked. His choice of authors, and the nature of the texts translated and published are highly significant, as well as his prologues, which − when available − give the reader a revealing insight into his motives and personal perspectives. He also tries his hand at journalism, proving his desire to maintain a direct contact with the public in an attempt to shape their attitudes as he had already started doing from the pulpit years earlier (see Gullón, 1989: 13). Despite his cultivation of the journalistic genre, and in contrast with Aranguren and Zambrano, his language is often obscure; its goal is to demand effort from the willing reader who, through this exercise, would awaken and practice independent thinking and a critical ability, which it is hoped could be extrapolated to other contexts. Although Chapter Five has been to a large extent a work of reconstruction, I believe that there exists sufficient material to carry out an analysis and evaluation of his contribution. What is more, given the influence he exerted on Spanish society, particularly during the Transition, the elucidation of the role he played is imperative in order to add one more piece to the incomplete puzzle of recent Spanish history, particularly considering that very little attention has been devoted to Aguirre’s role as an intellectual in his own right.
Thus, despite their multiple differences, what links together the work of Aranguren, Zambrano, and Aguirre is their intention not only to engage with the reader, but to encourage the readers’s engagement with their texts, which they hope would trigger a process of individual and social change, as will be argued throughout this thesis.
1.6.2 Genre
Despite the problems involved in structuring their production according to clear generic labels given the heterogeneity of their content, form, and style, it is still useful for the purpose of analysis to consider whether or not their writings tend to have the traits of any of the major traditional genres. Anderson explains that “the markers of genre can thus be used to insist on the resemblance to what is already known, and to organize and regulate the meanings of a text for the reader” (2001: 10). Therefore, in order to be able to determine if a text belongs to a specific genre we must first establish if such a text exhibits the markers or patterns which are consistently found in a given genre. The usefulness of this method of classification and analysis is the motivation for the elucidation of how these authors’s work conforms to these patterns. Equally, the existence of such patterns, and their impact on the reception and elaboration of meaning makes traditional genre allocation incompatible with the subversive and creative project of CT as elaborated in these authors’s work, as I shall argue below and throughout the rest of this thesis. Bearing this in mind and the fact that the boundaries between the private and public tone and content of their writings are often blurred, their publications can be classified as epistles and partial semi-autobiographic accounts. They are also characterized by a more public format which tends to materialize in speeches (including sermons in the case of Aguirre), newspaper and journal articles, essays, and, very significantly for Aguirre, translations.
Nonetheless, the most prolifically cultivated genre by all three authors is the essay. As Gracia’s insightful account of the nature of the essay as a genre reveals, essays can be understood as a “reflexión no sistemática, sin talante exhaustivo ni científico, expresada en términos marcadamente personales, proclive a la digresión más o menos colateral y sensible a la huella de un estilo de autor” (1996: 9). The essays written by Aranguren, Aguirre, and Zambrano fulfil this description; all three share a deliberate, open-ended, non-systematic, often digressive, and openly personal style. Hence, format and style seem to validate the claim that the genre mainly used by these authors is the essay; however, it is only with difficulty and reluctance that these works can be described as essays. A closer look at their writings reveals that, even formally, they resist classification since the traditional genres used blend into each other; this is so because they often borrow traits from other genres, so it is not unusual to encounter an essay − or part of it − in the tone of a public speech, or of an autobiographical confession. Essay writing in the case of Zambrano often adopts an epistolary aura, which can also be said of Aranguren’s and Aguirre’s newspaper articles. In addition, there is also a recurrent element of loiterature, in reference to the digression and openness of their writings; openness in the sense of indeterminate, unfinished, but also in its openness to the other, in what it contains and does not contain of alterity (see Chambers, 1999: 37).
The borderlines between genres, as between disciplines, become blurred, conferring their expression a sense of fluidity on the one hand, and a sense of confusion and disorientation on the other. It is precisely because of this difficulty in confining Zambrano’s work to a particular genre that Aranguren describes her work as transgressive:
estoy diciendo que todos estos creadores del lenguaje y particularmente los creadores del lenguaje poético, y de este lenguaje poético en la frontera de la poesía y otra cosa, como es el caso de María Zambrano, tienen que estar transgrediendo, por tanto, todo lo que constituye un género, puesto que ellos cultivan un género que en realidad son dos géneros distintos y por tanto una verdadera innovación en aquello que hacen. Tienen que ser por tanto transgresores, pero a la vez atenidos a la palabra y a las reglas de la palabra (1983: 114-115).
This transgressive characteristic is common to all three authors. In the case of Aguirre, this is also because of his use of language, which is markedly idiosyncratic and deliberately obscure, as we shall discuss in Chapter Five. Aranguren does not communicate in a poetic language; however, it is the nature of his critique that accounts for his transgressive style as shall be argued in Chapter Three.
This is just one of the many challenges which surround their work. Contemporary theorists tend to describe genres in terms of “family resemblances” among texts rather than look for rigid paradigms of classification which would define the nature of a text (see Swales, 1990: 49). Genre, however, is more than the mere reproduction or repetition of established patterns of expression. Because of this element of repetition, a certain level of expectation is created on the reader. As Paul Cobley puts it, “genre is not a set of textual features that can be enumerated; rather, it is an expectation” (2006: 41). Identifying a given text with a specific genre involves an implicit statement of similarities between the two which results in the creation of numerous expectations regarding the length of the text, the scope of its contents, the style in which it is written, the identity of its readership, and, even, its impact, to mention just a few. For this reason, the classification of a text into a genre is not a neutral one. Furthermore, from a Marxist perspective, genre can be considered as an instrument of social control because it contributes to reproducing the dominant ideology (see Feuer, 1992: 145). In as much as genre is an expectation, the text to be classified is linked to the existing patterns of a suitably similar genre. This has an impact on the reception of the text, especially, in the process of the elaboration of meaning on the part of the reader, which is particularly problematic for CT as we shall see below.
Genre is more than the combination of content, format, and style. The aspirations and intentions of the author, insofar as they can be discerned from the text, must also be considered, as well as the nature and status of the resulting product31. From the
31 As Gerard Genette argues, the intentions and aspirations of the text can be traced in the paratext, which contributes to providing a contextualizing frame for the reader: “the paratext consists, as [the] ambiguous prefix suggests, of all those things which we are never certain belong to the text of a work
aforementioned traits of essay writing, Gracia rightly concludes that “todo ello significa, por añadidura, que es un texto de opinión y, por debajo de un frecuente aspecto resolutivo o definitorio, su más íntima naturaleza lo aleja de lo conclusivo” (1996: 9). In contrast with this, even though neither Aranguren, Zambrano, nor Aguirre aim for conclusive and definitive results, and although their style is markedly personal, when examined under their own parameters, the content of their work cannot be considered as mere opinion either, for in line with CT, they aim to establish different epistemological grounds; they reject the dichotomy between science and doxa, between science and everything else. Yet, they still lack the definitiveness and conclusiveness or closure to become a political or philosophical system. Instead, their work may be described as a critique, but also as an invitation to the reader to share and to take part in the alternative framework of rationality in which they exercise their writings. Although personal, they cannot be considered individual, for they contain routes of personalized action in the direction of the realization of an alternative rationality which would become public and shared. That is why their writings transcend opinion and become a project in themselves; they go beyond hypothesis or theory to become possibility and action.
As indicated above, intentionality is crucial in the case of the FS, because it is precisely the shared aim of their project what provides their work with cohesion for the different manifestations of CT. Given the homogenizing and reactionary effects indicated above of classifying a text within a given genre, the allocation of a text elaborated by the members of the FS or by any of the three authors studied seems incompatible with the subversive and creative intentions of their project. Because their work constitutes an attack on the established patterns of rationality as well as an attempt to overcome them, it would then be misleading to classify their writings within established genres, such as essay or biography. However, it is unclear whether it is desirable or necessary to do away with genre altogether. As Derrida puts it, “a text cannot belong to no genre” (1981: 61). Semiotically, genre provides a useful framework of reference and understanding within which texts are not only interpreted, but also, even, produced (see Fowler 1989, p.216). That is why, in as much as the work of Critical Theorists shares the same aims and requires a specific methodology of their own, that is, the coherence between intentionality, content, and style, their work also constitutes a genre of their own, namely, CT. As Jane Feuer observes, “a
but which contribute to present – or ‘presentify’ – the text by making it into a book. It not only marks a zone of transition between text and non-text (‘hors-texte’), but also a transaction” (Genette, 1988: 63; see also Allen, 2000: 103-04). For Jacques Derrida such information can be found in a deconstructionist effort outside the text, in the “exergue”: “Exergue derives from the Greek and means ‘outside of work’; the term was used to describe the space on a coin or medal reserved for inscriptions” (Smith, 2005: 140). In addition to these elements, as indicated above, this thesis will examine the content of texts in the light of the whole œuvre of the author and will also resort to biographical data in order to elucidate the intentionality of the author.
genre is ultimately an abstract conception rather than something that exists empirically in the world” (1992: 144). It is this relative flexibility of the nature of genre as an abstract conception which ultimately allows CT to become a genre of its own, for its common traits are sufficiently distinctive and cohesive to do so.
These traits, as well as their consequences, attest to the praxis of an ideological statement: in their effort to destabilize and, ultimately, overcome instrumental reason, they strive to overcome the boundaries, divisions, and separations that traditionally shape Western rationality.