This session seeks to foment further discussion and critical study on contemporary Spanish crisis literature and its relationship to the established genre of crime fiction. Crisis literature in Spain analyzes the economic and cultural effects of the 2008 economic crisis and the long and slow recovery over the past decade that Spaniards have endured. Recently, crisis literature has enjoyed both critical attention and commercial success. Pablo Valdivia utilizes the genre in arguing for the permanence of an ongoing symbolic crisis that arises in the creation and consumption of crisis literature, in other words, a crisis that disconnects itself from numerical economic performance while fanning the flames of social and cultural change (22). Crisis literature therefore establishes symbolic resistance to ongoing economic malaise, because it lends visibility to the effects of the crisis, which in turn resists the power structures that inhibit economic recovery or that promote future crises.

Similarly, Jochen Mecke’s analysis of several crisis novels notes that they do not limit themselves to narrating the individual evolution of one main character, but rather they establish relationships with the collective history of the crisis (204). As a result, the crisis itself becomes a fundamental protagonist in these novels, reinforcing the absolute penetration of the precarious in contemporary Spain. Therefore, this special session contends that crisis literature necessitates further critical study and that the increased visibility and commercial success of the genre signals an increasing affinity for these literary interpretations of austerity as well as the social impacts of making the crisis more visible to a wider audience.

This session will examine how crime and crisis have become intertwined, considering the Spanish detective novel’s long literary tradition as a critical genre that analyzed the Spanish transition to democracy. While contemporary crisis literature in Spain manifests itself via several different literary genres, as Valdivia’s analysis shows, this session contends that the specific combination of crime fiction and crisis literature offers a compelling means of contesting the ongoing economic and social difficulties that 2008 accelerated. However, 2008 does not represent the first time Spain has suffered the effects of economic and social crisis. For example, Luis Moreno-Caballud underscores a specific literary and artistic production prior to the 2008 flashpoint in Spain that warned of the dangers of the economic bubble (539). Therefore Spanish literary and artistic engagement with crisis and precarity stem from decades of an economic roller coaster ride that has included moments of decline with moments of splendor. As a result, this session examines how the fusion of contemporary crisis literature and crime fiction responds not only to the relatively short-term problems caused by 2008, but also to the longer-term evolution of capitalism as a driver of social inequality and economic instability.

In order to encourage discussion between presenters and attendees, panelists will be strictly limited to 12 minute papers. First, Scott Boehm will present “Cinema of Dissensus: Spanish Neo-Noir, Neoliberalism & Cultural Crisis”. He will analyze the surge in Spanish neo-noir in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a symptom of the cultural crisis it has provoked in Spain. Taking film noir as the cinematic mode par excellence for depicting cultural crisis, Boehm demonstrates how several recent films deploy noir aesthetics, storylines and characters set within a crime-infested, morally bankrupt country amid landscapes of urban alienation. Boehm examines how the Spanish neo-noir contributes to the further internationalization of cultural crisis related to processes of globalization that threaten fantasies of national cohesion while rendering life more precarious.

Diana Aramburu’s paper, “Motherhood in Crisis: The “mare defensora” in Teresa Solana’s “Feina feta no fa destorb” and Empar Fernández’s “El dia que vaig perdre el món de vista””, similarly analyzes elements of crime fiction engaged with recent economic and social crisis. She argues that the figure of the delinquent mother has (re)emerged in some examples of crime literature as a “mare defensora”, a maternal defender who employs violence to protect her children. Using the crime fiction short story to explore both a maternal and a gender violence crisis, these texts showcase the effects of gender violence and respond to it by employing a revenge narrative. Aramburu contends that both authors employ a version of the mother narrative in their texts, but have transformed it to complicate how we arrive at the criminal from the maternal, emphasizing a maternal crisis of vulnerability. Since both mothers distrust the legal system, they take justice into their own hands, upending a patriarchal structure that instead of protecting women continues to denigrate victims.

Olga Bezhanova will present “Eastern European Immigrants and Criminality in the Spanish Crisis Novel”. Specifically, she argues that Crematorio by Rafael Chirbes (2007) and La carne by Rosa Montero (2016) belong to the expanding genre of the Spanish crisis novel that arose in response to the global economic crisis of 2008-9. The protagonists of these novels experience a growing awareness of the erosion by liquid capital of the institutions associated with the welfare state model. Bezhanova examines how these characters attempt to exorcise the anxieties that the crisis awakens in them by projecting them onto Eastern European immigrants whom they associate with illegal activities and the depredations of fluid capital in their countries of origin. Instead of casualties of globalization, immigrants are seen as emissaries of the new economic order that fosters fluidity and rootlessness and are blamed for the hardship created by the structures of exploitation that are implicit within late capitalism.

Finally, Joanne Britland will present “Representing the 2008 ‘desastre’: El Teatro del Barrio’s Masacre: Una historia del capitalismo español”. She analyzes this play in order to demonstrate how cultural works serve to depict “crimes” of the crisis—the human suffering and consequences. However, she argues that they also provide platforms to educate the public and rouse indignation to foster change and renewal. Britland’s analysis will explore how the textual and performative features of the play educate and inform the public to provoke shock and emotion, stimulating reflection, conversation, and ultimately, protest.