Haunted by Colonial Dreams: Contemporary Fiction on the Spanish Colonization of the Maghreb

Abstract

Ignacio Echevarría’s review of Lorenzo Silva’s Carta Blanca, winner of the 2004 Premio Primavera, begins with the critic’s sarcastic complaint about the pervasive sense of déjà vu that the Spanish literary prizes inspire in him.

The problem is that he recycles the scenery and historical episodes that Lorenzo Silva had used before (i.e. Del Rif a Yebala: viaje al sueño y pesadilla de Marruecos, 2001, and his novel El nombre de los nuestros, 2002), and he does this in a very conventional way. (“El taciturno …”)

The repetition that Echevarría perceives in Silva’s novel echoes Adorno and Hork hei mer’s critique of mass art. The repetitive nature of mass art according to the Frankfurt school eliminates any existing utopian impulse in art rendering it void of any transcendental meaning: “The development of the culture industry has led to the predominance of the effect, the obvious touch, and the technical detail over the work itself—which once expressed an idea, but was liquidated together with the idea” (125).