Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
5-17-2024
Year of Publication
2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Hispanic Studies
First Advisor
Carmen Moreno-Nuño
Abstract
Popular belief has always attributed women an innate capacity to overcome periods of crisis, whether these are provoked by an economic debacle or by a natural disaster. My dissertation explores the representation of women in Spanish narrative and film from the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008 up to the recession caused by the Covid- 19 pandemic in 2020. I study how specific cultural production can serve to perpetuate models of patriarchal domination or to provide alternative representations of women as independent, resilient individuals in times of economic crisis.
I analyze four novels and three films in which their authors produce representations of women who engage in active resistance against anti-neoliberal practices, but they also represent subjects who have internalize their precarious condition and have even made it pathological such that it not only impedes, but even works against the possibility of resistance. In one of the novels I analyze, La trabajadora (2014) by Elvira Navarro, the woman protagonist bears an inextricable relationship between the city of Madrid and her own identity, inasmuch as she progressively moves from the city center to its margins due to her economic struggles while also dealing with mental illness. Another novel in my study, Marta Sanz’s Clavícula (2017), similarly exemplifies how women who want to devote themselves to literature in Spain have not only normalized what it means to work under precarious circumstances, but also blame themselves for their mental and working conditions. My study shows how Spanish women have coped with the latest recession period in various ways, how they have created transnational alliances with other European women, how they relate to the city they inhabit, and how they vindicate a genealogy of Spanish women writers who did not receive the recognition they deserved. These representations help elucidate how women are not more resilient than men through difficult times.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2023.246
Recommended Citation
Encinas Caballero, Silvia, "Mujeres en crisis: posturas divergentes frente al neoliberalismo" (2023). Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies. 62.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/hisp_etds/62
