Introduction of Postgrowth Imaginaries: New Ecologies and Counter-hegemomic Culture in Post-2008 Spain (Liverpool University Press, 2018) (original) (raw)
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This essay analyzes two ecological movements that emerged and developed in Southern European Mediterranean countries (France, Italy, and Spain) during the last couple of decades. Both the de-growth and the "slow" movement challenge the "illogical logic" of constant economic growth in the context of a limited biosphere and denounce the social and ecological degradation generated by global capitalism. Both articulate a redefinition of European environmentalism by opposing the environmental thinking of strong Euro-American tradition-very rooted in the official discourse of the European Union, such as the "gospel of eco-efficiency" (Martínez Alier, El Ecologismo 31)-that try to solve the ecological problems with the same logic that causes and perpetuates them (green capitalism, sustainable development). The de-growth and the slow movement propose instead sustainable, systemic alternatives which are socially and ecologically possible. These alternatives are based on conviviality, voluntary simplicity, slowness, and the reduction of the socioeconomic metabolism. They point out the necessity of an epistemological change and question the tyranny of industrial time (to augment constantly the production and consumption pace) to conclude that we can and need to live better with less, since it is more desirable, sustainable, and just. Since the 2008 financial crisis the de-growth and slow movement have acquired certain popularity and visibility beyond their Euro-Mediterranean context, which makes them relevant actors on the global movement for environmental justice and the critique of global capitalism.
Mucho más que cine: historia, literatura y arte en el cine en español y en portugués, 2021
One of the most haunting paintings in the rich history of Spanish art is Francisco Goya’s well-known Saturn Devouring His Son. In the wake of the Great Recession this «black painting» became something of an epistemic icon of a new age of economic savagery as an Internet meme appearing around the globe 1. In Spain, a grisly reproduction of it containing the words «Capital Salvaje» was hung from one of the large billboards overlooking the square in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol during the 15M indignados movement that swept the country in 2011. While the peaceful occupation and temporary transformation of this commercial space into a communal meeting ground in which a confluence of precarious bodies combined in solidarity to register mass dissensus with the cruelty of capitalism in crisis mode, the specter of irrational violence depicted in Saturn Devouring His Son haunted the 15M participants. The anthropophagic fears unleashed by the Spanish economic crisis seemed to be arrested in the figure of a crazed, naked man clutching a headless, semi-devoured corpse as he is about to bite off another arm in the pitch black of what appears to be a very dark night of a most hungry soul. As Germán Labrador Méndez has noted in an insightful article on what he calls «the cannibal wave» that seemed to wash over crisis Spain, versions of Goya’s painting and other anthropophagic imagery would reappear in different forms in Spain in subsequent years 2. Indeed, the pervasive sense that Spain was in the process of being consumed by the crisis had penetrated the popular imagination, to which the ubiquity of anthropophagic images and rhetoric …
Martinez (2021) Living Finitude in an Age of Growth (Dissertation)
2021
Spain’s incorporation into the global economy as a young democracy and new member of the European Economic Community was followed by a period of accelerated economic growth, praised by global and Spanish elites throughout the 1990s and early 2000s as an exemplary success story of advanced capitalism. Although evidence of the unstable foundations of this rapid growth—driven by ambitious public works, speculative urbanization, massive accrual of bad debt and destruction of ecosystems—was present throughout this period, the decade following the global financial crisis of 2008, marked by a prolonged economic, social and political crisis, saw a proliferation of popular, artistic and scholarly critiques condemning the unsustainable politics, disparities and destructive nature of Spanish late capitalist development. While these critiques are powerful in documenting and condemning the social and environmental impacts of speculative development, Living Finitude asks in what ways they have been short-sighted, limited to the experience of economic crisis, and limited in the imagination of more sustainable, post-growth cultural narratives. In its analysis of Spanish cultural production—including photography of abandoned speculative architecture; films that document the transformation of Spanish cities in the image of global capital; and novels narrating the destruction of the Mediterranean coastline due to mass tourism and speculative urbanization—this dissertation traces a lack of long-term and ecological thinking in vocabularies typically deployed to challenge the ideologies and practices of Spanish late capitalist development. Living Finitude explores how discourses that advocate the conservation of “natural” or cultural heritage, frame stalled speculative construction as “modern ruins” or undermine the ideologies of late capitalism through the grotesque narration of aging and decay reproduce growth optimism (the expectation of perpetual GDP growth) and mirror consumerist subjectivities, shaped by lack of engagement with the material processes that sustain life. The language of “ruin,” “crisis,” “heritage” and “conservation” reveal consumerist anxieties and subjectivities around material decay, aging and biological limits, necessary processes for resilient ecosystems and long-term imaginaries. This language also reinforces modern binaries of nature/culture and past/present, which render invisible the long-term ecologies inhabited by late capitalist society. Living Finitude concludes by exploring the potential for post-growth narratives that challenge the short-term horizons of neoliberal politics in boom-period novels and films that represent ancient objects and lifeforms (bones, stones, centennial trees), the experience of aging, and projects that span multiple generations. These narratives emphasize trans-generational identification, shared vulnerability and meaningful ways of living within biological limits.
The Political Economy of Contemporary Spain. From Miracle to Mirage
The so-called ‘Spanish miracle’, beginning in the mid-1990s, eventually became a nightmare for the majority of the population, culminating in the present-day economic and political crisis. This book explores the main features of the Spanish political-economic model during both the growth and crisis periods. Analyzing the causes and consequences of the continuing economic crisis in Spain, this book delves into five analytical axes: the evolution of the growth model; the role of Spain in the international division of labor; the financial sector and its influence on the rest of the economy; changes in the labor market; and the distributional consequences of both the expansive phase and the later crisis. Furthermore, contributors examine the formation of a triangle of actors (the government sector, building sector, and financial capital) that shaped the Spanish growth model, together with the effects of Spain’s membership in the Economic and Monetary Union. Also considering ecological problems, gender issues, and the immigration question, this book challenges the alleged recovery of living conditions during recent years, as well as the explanation of the crisis as the result of irrational behaviors or the greedy nature of certain actors. The Political Economy of Contemporary Spain provides a coherent explanation of the Spanish economic crisis based on a pluralistic approach, while proposing several measures that could contribute to a transformation of Spain’s economic and social models.