Dec 27 - Top Spanish Academic Publishes Article On Gibraltarian Author
Professor Ana María Manzanas, an academic at the University of Salamanca, has just published a 7,000-word article on the work of Gibraltarian writer M. G. Sanchez.
Professor Manzanas is an internationally recognised authority in the field of Border Studies and her last three books – Hospitality in American Literature and Culture: Spaces, Bodies, Borders (2016), The Static Hero in American Literature and Culture (2014), Cities, Borders, and Spaces (Routledge 2011), all co-authored with Professor Jesús Benito of the University of Valladolid – have been published by the prestigious academic publisher Routledge.
Her article – entitled ‘The Line and the Limit of Britishness: The Construction of Gibraltarian Identity in M. G. Sanchez's writing’ – has appeared in the latest issue of the university periodical ES Review.
The article looks at four of M. G. Sanchez’s publications – Rock Black, Past: A Memoir, The Escape Artist and Solitude House – and argues that his books “flesh out a border culture with very specific linguistic and cultural traits.”
“It is not the space of Britishness, nor the space of Spanishness,” Professor Manzanas continues, “but something else, an uncharted territory away from nationalistic absolutisms and overintegrated perceptions of culture. This is the liminal space Sanchez repossesses in his writing.”
Professor Manzanas believes that there are parallels between Gibraltarian borderland culture and the type of culture seen along the border between Mexico and the US. She cites the “multiple manifestations of intercultural communication” between the people of Gibraltar and that of La Linea as an example; and also argues that many of the scenes witnessed at our border during times of political tension are “reminiscent of contemporary scenes at the United States/Mexican border.”
Towards the end of the article she considers how Gibraltarians perceive Spain and how Spaniards, for their part, view Gibraltarians:
“The border also seems to split two black legends that usually pertain to border areas. There is the Black Legend Seracino learns from his fellow workers at the hospital: the historical evidence against Spain that starts with the Inquisition, goes through the Conquest of America and Franco’s dictatorship but continues till today, with Spanish bullfights. There is, on the Spanish side, the perception that Gibraltar is all about illegal trafficking. What Sanchez fleshes out in his writing is what remains in the midst of these two gravitational pulls and how to qualify this apparent void and no-man’s land. Carved out around this nothingness, Gibraltarian identity seems to disrupt dichotomous formulations. Echoing Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic, it is possible to claim that “What was initially felt to be a curse”, the curse of being deficient, the curse of not being able to name anything strictly Gibraltarian, the curse of the periphery, and the curse of being crossed by the border get repossessed in Sanchez’s writing. It becomes affirmed and is reconstructed as the basis of a privileged standpoint from which to look at Britain and Spain.”
In her conclusion Professor Manzanas quotes the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who famously argued that borders are one of the best places “to anatomize” the workings and ideology of the state controlling them. She expresses doubts about “the limits of Britishness as an imaginary community,” but at the same time questions the value of stringent border controls:
“By the same token, it is possible to argue that in closing the gate and strangling Gibraltar, Spain strangles itself. Any political boundary cuts both ways, and one cannot block one side without considering the consequences of the blocking on the other.”
The full article can be accessed on this link: https://revistas.uva.es/index.php/esreview/article/view/1607/1365
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