This presentation analyzes the affects and emotions of survivors of Franco dictatorship (Spain, 1939-1975) from the crossroads of anthropology of emotions, feminist epistemology and memory studies.Based on life stories of women who were persecuted by the regime, the presentation explores the emotions mobilized around different vital stages of anti-Francoist fighters who suffered political repression (beginning of the militancy, arrest, torture, trial, imprisonment, release…). For social anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo, emotions are "embodied thoughts" (1984); therefore, the (human, tortured) body is a privileged space through which to study the "Political Economy of the Emotions" (Scheper-Hughes, 1997), which shapes the social body linking emotions and power. In 1975, after the dictator's death, the Spanish transition to democracy starts. This period is marked by the imposition of a "regime of feelings" (Besserer, 2014) based on collective silence and amnesia, and indifference to anti-fascism. This regime of feelings is supported by a series of technologies (rituals, laws and codes) that regulate affections and operate in parallel with the legal regime: the Amnesty Law passed in 1977 became a Full Stop law that today, 45 years after Franco´s death, still prevents access to justice for people who have been tortured, imprisoned, exiled and persecuted as well as for the relatives of the disappeared and murdered. Finally, this presentation analyzes how subaltern forms of emotional resistance of surviving anti-Francoist fighters (pain, memory, pride...) refuse to assume these "hegemonic" feelings (indifference, apathy, disaffection), transferring the "struggle of emotions" to the public space and the current political debate.
References:
ROSALDO, Michelle Z. (1984) "Toward an anthropology of self and feeling", in R.A. SHWEDER; R.A. LEVINE (eds.) Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 137-157.
SCHEPER-HUGHES, Nancy. (1992). Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil. Univ of California Press.
BESSERER, Federico. (2014). "Regímenes de sentimientos y la subversión del orden sentimental: Hacia una economía política de los afectos". Nueva antropología, 27(81), 55-76.
