Abstract
This chapter examines sensory landscapes, or sensescapes, in the novels El salario del gigante (The Salary of the Giant) (2011) by José Ardillo, Madrid: frontera (Madrid: Border) (2016) by David Llorente, and Nos mienten (They Are Lying to Us) (2015) by Eduardo Vaquerizo, all of which may be considered dystopias of precarity. The sensescapes accentuate the abjection experienced by Indignados (Indignant Ones) who live in poverty and whose close ties with their resource-scarce environments are an indicator of their difficulties in controlling their surroundings and maintaining their dignity. Tensions among socioeconomic classes are underscored by acts of contamination and purification. Unequal access to technology, which is able to augment or even supplant the senses, also plays a role in the construction of social class.
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Notes
- 1.
Howes, introduction to Empire of the Senses, 11.
- 2.
There are innumerable reactions to the crisis in literature and film, many of which aptly capture the anguish and indignation of Spaniards, but are not dystopias per se. Some of the (nondocumentary) films about the crisis that have received ample attention in the press include Terrados [Rooftops] (2011), 5 metros cuadrados [5 square meters] (2011), La chispa de la vida (which was released as “As Luck Would Have It” in the English-language version) (2011), El mundo es nuestro [The world is ours] (2012), Ayer no termina nunca [Yesterday never ends] (2013), Hermosa juventud [Beautiful youth] (2014), Murieron por encima de sus posibilidades [They died beyond their means] (2014), Perdiendo el norte [Losing the North] (2015), El arte de perder (The art of losing) (2015), and Techo y comida [Shelter and food] (2015). Among some of the books about the crisis are La mano invisible [The invisible hand] (2011) by Isaac Rosa, Democracia [Democracy] (2012) by Pablo Gutiérrez, En la orilla [On the shore] (2013) by Rafael Chirbes, Yo, precario [I, the precarious worker] (2013) by Javier López Menacho, A la puta calle [To the fucking street] (2013) by Cristina Fallarás, La trabajadora [The worker] (2014) by Elvira Navarro, and El agua de la muerte [The water of death] (2014) by José Antonio Nieto Solís.
- 3.
Hessel, Time for Outrage.
- 4.
“Encuesta de población activa”; “El paro subió.”
- 5.
“Graph of U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1930–45.”
- 6.
Llano Ortiz, El estado de la pobreza, 17, 14. According to a 2004 European Commission report, “People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live. Because of their poverty they may experience multiple disadvantages through unemployment, low income, poor housing, inadequate health care and barriers to lifelong learning, culture, sport and recreation. They are often excluded and marginalised from participating in activities (economic, social and cultural) that are the norm for other people and their access to fundamental rights may be restricted.” “From Poverty to Social Cohesion,” 75.
- 7.
Mack, “Social Exclusion.”
- 8.
Carreño, “Un tercio de los españoles.” It should be noted that AROPE measures relative poverty, not absolute poverty. The European Union has set the poverty threshold at “60% of the national median equivalized disposable income.” Feng and Nguyen, “Relative versus Absolute.” This suggests that, for example, “si se colocan todos los ciudadanos de un país en fila y se ordenan por orden de renta, del más rico al más pobre, el que queda en el medio es la ‘mediana’ de los ingresos del país” (if you were to line up all the citizens of the country in a row and order them by salary, from the richest to the poorest, the one that is in the middle is the “median” of the salaries of the country). Junquera, “La pobreza relativa.”
- 9.
Carreño, “Un tercio de los españoles.” According to a 2013 study by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) (National Institute of Statistics), 42% of Spaniards could not handle unforeseen financial setbacks (of 650 Euros) and 16% faced challenges just making it to the end of the month. See Prats, “La población en riesgo.”
- 10.
Carreño, “Un tercio de los españoles.”
- 11.
Gorraiz López, “Distopía y metanoia en España”; Meléndez Martín, “¿Es España una distopía?”
- 12.
“Las 44 conductas.”
- 13.
Álvarez et al., Nosotros, los indignados.
- 14.
There is also a growing number of works of criticism centered on the Spanish economic crisis, though not necessarily with a dystopian focus. Dean Allbritton’s insightful article “Prime Risks: the Politics of Pain and Suffering in Spanish Crisis Cinema” is one of the earlier academic articles about filmic representations of the financial crisis. There are also several scholarly articles on literary representations of the crisis like “La novela de crisis en el año 2013: En la orilla, Democracia y 2020” by Pablo Lorente Muñoz and “Narrando la crisis financiera de 2008 y sus repercusiones” by Pablo Valdivia, as well as ones that focus on a variety of cultural manifestations of the crisis in La imaginación hipotecada, edited by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and Antonio Gómez López Quiñones, and in special issues of journals such as “Spain in Crisis: 15-M and the Culture of Indignation” edited by Bryan Cameron in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, “La imaginación sostenible: Culturas y crisis económica en la España actual” edited by Luis Moreno-Caballud in Hispanic Review, and “Five Years after Spain’s 15-M: Narratives of the Economic and Political Crisis” edited by Albert Jornet Somoza in 452ºF: Revista de Teoría de Literatura y Literatura Comparada.
- 15.
Murray, “Capital Ruptures.”
- 16.
This story is strongly reminiscent of Montero’s novel Lágrimas en la lluvia [Tears in the rain] (2011), which also portrays access to clean air as being a privilege that only the wealthy can afford.
- 17.
Alberto García-Teresa has written a comprehensive essay on Gerotron-2050. See García-Teresa, “Gerotron 2050.”
- 18.
For more information on technological utopianism, see Segal, Technological Utopianism.
- 19.
Bates, “Q&A with Dan Bloom.”
- 20.
Huesemann and Huesemann, Techno-Fix. Ardillo’s novel shares resonances with Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment, as both profess profound skepticism about technology as a panacea.
- 21.
Mandic et al., “Introduction: Law and Smell,” 4.
- 22.
Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 127.
- 23.
Degen, Sensing Cities, 10.
- 24.
Howes, “HYPERESTHESIA,” 282.
- 25.
Rivlin and Gravelle, Deciphering the Senses, 88–89; Hyde, “Offensive Bodies,” 253; Howes, introduction to Empire of the Senses, 10.
- 26.
Mandic et al., “Introduction: Law and Smell,” 5–6.
- 27.
Hyde, “Offensive Bodies,” 255.
- 28.
Galindo, “David Llorente.”
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
MacLeod and Ward, “Spaces of Utopia,” 160. Evan McKenzie coined the term “privatopia” to describe some of the residential communities that are developed around a common interest. See McKenzie, Privatopia.
- 31.
Flusty, “The Banality of Interdiction,” 659.
- 32.
MacLeod and Ward, “Spaces of Utopia,” 161.
- 33.
Döşemeci, “Social movement.”
- 34.
Ibid., 188.
- 35.
Ibid., 194.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Bridge, “Pierre Bourdieu,” 80. The concept of the “classed body” is discussed by Gary Bridge, who affirms that the notion has traditionally received scant attention in critical geography. He considers the “classed body,” which is the “idea of the body as the locus of class reproduction; the role of the body in the making of social space and the embodied construction of socio-spatial order,” to be a fruitful area of investigation. Ibid.
- 38.
Emporis, s.v. “Torre de Madrid,” accessed February 19, 2018, https://www.emporis.com/buildings/112008/torre-de-madrid-madrid-spain.
- 39.
Sevillano and Andreu, “Un cráter”; “Barcelo explotará.”
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
For an overview of the squatter movement in Spain, see Palardy, “Into the Matrix,” 111–16.
- 43.
“Eduardo Vaquerizo.”
- 44.
Gómez, “Alcorcón y su historia.”
- 45.
Döşemeci, “Social movement.”
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Palardy, D.Q. (2018). Sensescapes of Precarity in El salario del gigante by José Ardillo, Madrid: frontera by David Llorente, and Nos mienten by Eduardo Vaquerizo. In: The Dystopian Imagination in Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film. Hispanic Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92885-2_5
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