Lorraine Ryan - Böcker

Almudena Grandes is one of Spain´s foremost women´s writers, having sold over 1.1 million copies of her episodios de una guerra interminable, her six-volume series that ranges from the Spanish Civil War to the democratic period; the myriad prizes awarded to her, 18 in total, confirm her pre-eminence. This book situates Grandes´s novels within gendered, philosophical, and mnemonic theoretical concepts that illuminate hidden dimensions of her much-studied work. Lorraine Ryan considers and expands on existing critical work on Grandes´s oeuvre, proposing new avenues of interpretation and understanding. She seeks to debunk the arguments of those who portray Grandes as the proponent of a sectarian, eminently biased Republican memory by analysing the wide variety of gender and perpetrator memories that proliferate in her work. The intersection of perpetrator memory with masculinity, ecocriticism, medical ethics and the child’s perspectives confirms Grandes’ nuanced engagement with Spanish memory culture. Departing from a philosophical basis, Ryan reconfigures the Republican victim in the novels as a vulnerable subject who attempts to flourish, thus refuting the current critical opinion of the victim as overly-empowered. The new perspectives produced in this monograph do not aim to suggest that Grandes is an advocate of perpetrator memory; rather, it suggests that Grandes is committed to a more pluralistic idea of memory culture, whereby her novels generate understanding of multiple victim, perpetrator and gender memories, an analysis that produces new and meaningful engagements with these novels. Thus, Ryan contends that Grandes´s historical novels are infinitely more complex and nuanced than heretofore conceived.

Almudena Grandes is one of Spain´s foremost women´s writers, having sold over 1.1 million copies of her episodios de una guerra interminable, her six-volume series that ranges from the Spanish Civil War to the democratic period; the myriad prizes awarded to her, 18 in total, confirm her pre-eminence. This book situates Grandes´s novels within gendered, philosophical, and mnemonic theoretical concepts that illuminate hidden dimensions of her much-studied work. Lorraine Ryan considers and expands on existing critical work on Grandes´s oeuvre, proposing new avenues of interpretation and understanding. She seeks to debunk the arguments of those who portray Grandes as the proponent of a sectarian, eminently biased Republican memory by analysing the wide variety of gender and perpetrator memories that proliferate in her work. The intersection of perpetrator memory with masculinity, ecocriticism, medical ethics and the child’s perspectives confirms Grandes’ nuanced engagement with Spanish memory culture. Departing from a philosophical basis, Ryan reconfigures the Republican victim in the novels as a vulnerable subject who attempts to flourish, thus refuting the current critical opinion of the victim as overly-empowered. The new perspectives produced in this monograph do not aim to suggest that Grandes is an advocate of perpetrator memory; rather, it suggests that Grandes is committed to a more pluralistic idea of memory culture, whereby her novels generate understanding of multiple victim, perpetrator and gender memories, an analysis that produces new and meaningful engagements with these novels. Thus, Ryan contends that Grandes´s historical novels are infinitely more complex and nuanced than heretofore conceived.

This collection of essays explores cultural phenomena that are shaping masculine identities in contemporary Spain, asking and striving to answer these compelling questions: what does it mean to be a man in present-day Spain? How has masculinity evolved since Franco’s dictatorship? What are the dynamics of masculinity in contemporary Spanish culture? How has hegemonic masculinity been contested in cultural productions? This volume is comprised of sixteen essays that address these very questions by examining literary, cultural and film representations of the configurations of masculinities in contemporary Spain. Divided into three thematic units, starting with the undermining of the monolithic Francoist archetype of masculinity, continuing with the reformulation of hegemonic masculinity and finishing with regional emergent masculinities, all of the volume´s essays focus on the redefinition of Spanish masculinities. Principal themes of the volume include alternative families, queer masculinities, performative masculinities, memory and resistance to hegemonic discourses of manliness, violence and emotions, public versus private masculinities, regional masculinities, and marginal masculinities. This exploration not only produces new insights into masculinity, but also yields nuanced insights into the recuperation of memory in contemporary Spain, the reconfiguration of the family, the status of women in Spanish society, and regional identities.

Focusing on literary texts produced from 2000 to 2009, Lorraine Ryan examines the imbrication between the preservation of Republican memory and the transformations of Spanish public space during the period from 1931 to 2005. Accordingly, Ryan analyzes the spatial empowerment and disempowerment of Republican memory and identity in Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de barro, Ángeles López’s Martina, la rosa número trece, Alberto Méndez’s ’Los girasoles ciegos,’ Carlos Ruiz Zafón´s La sombra del viento, Emili Teixidor’s Pan negro, Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista, and José María Merino’s La sima. The interrelationship between Republican subalternity and space is redefined by these writers as tense and constantly in flux, undermined by its inexorable relationality, which leads to subjects endeavoring to instill into space their own values. Subjects erode the hegemonic power of the public space by articulating in an often surreptitious form their sense of belonging to a prohibited Republican memory culture. In the democratic period, they seek a categorical reinstatement of same on the public terrain. Ryan also considers the motivation underlying this coterie of authors’ commitment to the issue of historical memory, an analysis which serves to amplify the ambits of existing scholarship that tends to ascribe it solely to postmemory.

Focusing on literary texts produced from 2000 to 2009, Lorraine Ryan examines the imbrication between the preservation of Republican memory and the transformations of Spanish public space during the period from 1931 to 2005. Accordingly, Ryan analyzes the spatial empowerment and disempowerment of Republican memory and identity in Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de barro, Ángeles López’s Martina, la rosa número trece, Alberto Méndez’s ’Los girasoles ciegos,’ Carlos Ruiz Zafón´s La sombra del viento, Emili Teixidor’s Pan negro, Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista, and José María Merino’s La sima. The interrelationship between Republican subalternity and space is redefined by these writers as tense and constantly in flux, undermined by its inexorable relationality, which leads to subjects endeavoring to instill into space their own values. Subjects erode the hegemonic power of the public space by articulating in an often surreptitious form their sense of belonging to a prohibited Republican memory culture. In the democratic period, they seek a categorical reinstatement of same on the public terrain. Ryan also considers the motivation underlying this coterie of authors’ commitment to the issue of historical memory, an analysis which serves to amplify the ambits of existing scholarship that tends to ascribe it solely to postmemory.

This collection of essays explores cultural phenomena that are shaping masculine identities in contemporary Spain, asking and striving to answer these compelling questions: what does it mean to be a man in present-day Spain? How has masculinity evolved since Franco’s dictatorship? What are the dynamics of masculinity in contemporary Spanish culture? How has hegemonic masculinity been contested in cultural productions? This volume is comprised of sixteen essays that address these very questions by examining literary, cultural and film representations of the configurations of masculinities in contemporary Spain. Divided into three thematic units, starting with the undermining of the monolithic Francoist archetype of masculinity, continuing with the reformulation of hegemonic masculinity and finishing with regional emergent masculinities, all of the volume´s essays focus on the redefinition of Spanish masculinities. Principal themes of the volume include alternative families, queer masculinities, performative masculinities, memory and resistance to hegemonic discourses of manliness, violence and emotions, public versus private masculinities, regional masculinities, and marginal masculinities. This exploration not only produces new insights into masculinity, but also yields nuanced insights into the recuperation of memory in contemporary Spain, the reconfiguration of the family, the status of women in Spanish society, and regional identities.

This book focuses on zero hours and on-call work as an extreme form of casual and precarious employment. It includes country studies of the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Ireland, where there has been increasing concern about the prevalence of such work, and working time uncertainty, as well as varying levels of public policy debate on regulation. The book incorporates a comparative review of zero hours work based on the findings of the country studies. This pays particular attention to state regulatory responses to zero hours work, and incorporates the sociological concepts of accumulation and legitimation functions of the state.Exploring the regulation of zero hours work beyond individual countries, the book includes an analysis of external regulation of zero hours work at the supranational level, namely the European Union and ILO.Further, it assesses the implications of zero hours for workers in new sectors ofeconomic activity, particularly the impact of the platform or ‘gig’ economy on the fundamental nature of the employment relationship. It also considers the societal implications of zero hours work and the ethical responsibilities of employers and governments towards workers as citizens.