From Sentimentality to Masculine Excess in Galician National Discourse

Abstract

This article studies the gendered meanings of Galician national discourse with particular focus on the notion of masculinity. The first part of the article analyzes cultural writings in the early stages of Galician regionalism and establishes how the metaphor of Galicia as feminine (and, as a consequence, of Galician manhood as marked with the notions of sentimentality and submissiveness) gradually became an important stumbling block for nationalism's emergence as a viable political movement. In the second section, the author studies how the early texts of Galician political nationalism reacted against such metaphors by means of a heightened masculinist discourse bent on recasting national insurgence as a question of virility. Finally, the author analyzes Ricardo Carvalho Calero's Historia da literatura galega contemporánea (1963/1981) in line with this rhetoric of national virility and as an example of what the author will call the masculine excess present in the seminal texts of Galician cultural nationalism.

From ‘feminisation’ to ‘feministisation’ in Galician Nationalism: the case study of women in the Bloque Nacionalista Galego

“…Drawing on the initial debate in feminist academia focusing on this connection (Cockburn, 1998;Hasso, 1998;Herr, 2003), the study reveals a consensus among all interviewees that both concepts converge and become tools to achieve 'liberation' in a national and gender perspective. This statement, which has been argued by many authors (Queizán, 2004;Ortbals, 2007;Miguélez-Carballeira, 2012) in the Galician nationalist movement, remains contemporary. In part, these authors find this alliance reminiscent of post-colonial feminist theory (see chapter 2).…”

“…However, the complexity of this process must be acknowledged where the wide context of an internal crisis (Nespereira Vale, 2017), the years of collective work by feminist groups and individuals (Ortbals, 2007;Miguélez-Carballeira, 2012) As previous studies about the feminisation of political movements observed (Tasdemir, 2013), the more women have the ability to manoeuvre, the more influence they will have to make changes regarding masculine structures, integrating feminist policies or creating safe decision-making spaces. The research findings have highlighted not only the importance of feminist leadership but especially the significance of the women activists' collective consciousness behind them.…”