1st Edition
Colonialist Gazes and Counternarratives of Blackness Afro-Spanishness in 20th- and 21st-Century Spain
Building on the growing field of Afropean Studies, this interdisciplinary and intermedial collection of essays proposes a dialogue on Afro-Spanishness that is not exclusively tied to immigration and that understands Blackness as a non-essentialist, heterogeneous and diasporic concept. Studying a variety of twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural products, some essays explore the resilience of the colonialist paradigms and the circulation of racial ideologies and colonial memories that promote national narratives of whitening. Others focus on Black self-representation and examine how Afro-Spanish authors, artists, and activists destabilize colonial gazes and constructions of national identity, propose decolonial views of Spain and Europe’s literature and history, articulate Afro-Diasporic knowledges, and envision Afro-descendance as an empowering tool.
Introduction: Black Spain in Afro-Europe
Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego and Ana León-Távora
Chapter 1: From Negrophilia to Necropolitics: Anti-Black Racism in the Spanish Avant-Garde Humor Magazines
Ana León-Távora
Chapter 2: The Transnational Afropessimism of Francisco Zamora Loboch
Baltasar Fra-Molinero
Chapter 3: The Value of Color: Spain’s Equality Stamps Fiasco
Jeffrey Coleman
Chapter 4: Educating Spain about its Afro-Identity on the Web: Afroféminas
Esther María Alarcón Arana
Chapter 5: Hidden Knowledges and Diasporic Positionings: The Autobiographical and Testimonial Texts in Metamba Miago: Relatos y saberes de mujeres afroespañolas
Julia Borst
Chapter 6: Un-Whitening Late Francoist Spain: Knots of Memory in Lucía Mombío’s Las que se atrevieron
Martin Repinecz
Chapter 7: Decolonizing the History of Afro-Spaniards: Afrofeminismo. 50 años de lucha y activismo de mujeres negras en España (1968-2018) by Abuy Nfubea
Dosinda García-Alvite
Chapter 8: Mapping Black Women through Art and Social Media: the Case of Montserrat Anguiano
Stefania Licata
Chapter 9: From Below and from Within: Urban Peripheries in Lucía Mbomío’s Barrionalismos
Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego
Chapter 10: An Inconclusive Conclusion: Autoethnography as a Model for Epistemic Decolonization
Ana León-Távora
Biography
Ana León-Távora is Associate Professor of Spanish, Director of Modern Languages and Director of Race and Ethnicity Studies at Salem College, North Carolina. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters that examine issues of social and political power relations, racial, ethnic, and linguistic discrimination in Spain, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She is also the co-editor and co-translator of the bilingual critical book and catalogue on contemporary Cuban art authored by Linda Howe, Cuban Artists’ Books and Prints. Libros y Grabados de Artistas Cubanos: 1998–2008 (2009).
Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Entre mujeres. Política de la amistad y el deseo en la narrativa española contemporánea (2008) and the editor of two collections of essays: Black USA and Spain. Shared Memories in the 20th Century (2021) and Memoria colonial e inmigración. La negritud en la España posfranquista (2008). In addition, she has co-edited the special issue of Romance Notes “The Rosalia Effect. Popular Music and Culture in Contemporary Spain” (with N. M. Murray, 2023) and Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ensayos de crítica cultural (with A. Villamandos, 2011). As part of her research project on women intellectuals in the press during Spain’s Transition to democracy, she published Ana María Moix: Semblanzas e impertinencias (2016), an edition of Moix’s journalistic writings.
