POETICS OF SOLIDARITY: THE EMERGENCE OF ANARCHIST MASS CULTURE

Abstract

This dissertation explores how a developing cultural field of freethinkers—anarchists, writers, teachers and scientists—shaped the post-98 Spanish world, promoting a popular culture of mutual aid. In Part One I compare the impact the works of Charles Darwin and Pyotr Kropotkin—the most published essayist in Spain by the turn of the 20th century—had on Iberian popular literature, discussing different models of society and nature and defying the official version of the Cuban War of Independence. The second part of the dissertation addresses the “Procesos de Montjuïc”, a massive trial against anarchists and freethinkers held without due process, which led to an international campaign to release the prisoners, that ultimately weakened the Restoration regime, expanded the scope of the anarchist movement, and altered its thinking. I examine articles, books, and unpublished memoirs by a dozen anarchist leaders and freethinking authors, whose works are kept at various archives in the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. Part Three focuses on two novels: La Catedral (1904) by Blasco Ibáñez, and Aurora roja (1905) by Pío Baroja. Both works allow us to observe quotidian relations inside anarchist culture from the perspective of two external observers. They also show, in a fictional setting, the connections between anarchists, freethinkers, republican politicians, and bohemian writers. My approach relies primarily on Bruno Latour’s works on modernity and epistemology, on Butler and Alba Rico’s ideas about bodies' interdependence, and on Agamben’s and Foucault’s respective theories on form-of-life and sovereignty.