Culture and the State in Spain

1550-1850

Thomas Lewis, Francisco J. Sanchez, Thomas Lewis, Francisco J. Sanchez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317944362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume address the role of literature in the formation of cultural notions of 'state, ' 'nation, ' 'subject, ' and 'citizen' in Spain from the Renaissance to the Romantic period. It brings together literary scholars and historians of the Golden Age and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a dialog framed by the rise and dissolution of the Absolutist state. Individual essays attempt to understand relationships between subjectivity and the state in Spain from the earliest articulations of the subject to the consolidation of an array of bourgeois subjectivities. The major argument running throughout the volume is that literary discourse, from the time it emerges in the sixteenth century to the time it coheres within a wholly modern concept of the aesthetic, actively develops forms of subjectivity in relation to institutions of class power. The intention of the volume is to clarify central problems regarding the emergence and function of literature across distinct modes of production, state formations, and hegemonic cultures. This book keeps open a debate on the long process through which literature and the aesthetic come to be constituted as a complex arena in which-sometimes directly, more often indirectly-the struggle for state power unfolds.

Chapter 1
Cristóbal de Villalón: Language, Education, and the Absolutist State

Malcolm K. Read

It has often been pointed out that the publication of Nebrija's Spanish grammar in 1492 coincides with the beginnings of Spanish overseas imperialism and, in close association, the rise of Spain's Absolutist State. At the same time, attention has been drawn to the strategic role of the educational apparatus within these historical processes. Such gestures, indeed, are in danger of becoming a commonplace: Nebrija himself was aware of the relevant interconnections and the fact of their existence gains nothing from its mechanical repetition. However, it will be my claim in what follows that the association between the state, education, and grammatical law has not been thought through systematically. The omission is surprising since all three domains converge on similar issues of legitimation, which cry out for comparative analysis. By way of initiating the latter, the present paper proposes a common framework of discussion, respecting the autonomy (in the last instance) of the different levels involved, but demonstrating how each needs to be understood within the broader context of the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

My goals are both modest and quite ambitious. Modest to the extent that attention will be limited to a number of works attributed to the Renaissance scholar, writer, and humanist Cristóbal de Villalón (c. 1505-58). Not a great deal is known about Villalón's life, and his identity and authorship have been the focus of intense scholarly debate. Indeed, it has been suggested that his name conceals the identities of three or possibly four writers. Disagreements have been fueled no doubt by the thematic and generic diversity of Villalon's oeuvre, which at one time included Viaje a Turquia and even Lazarillo de Tormes.¹ While the works discussed below can confidently be attributed to Villalón, it is of no great consequence, theoretically speaking, whether they can finally be "grounded" in a single author. Genealogically, their ideological interconnections, offset against an apparent diversity of form, would still call for comment and explanation. How precisely, as discursive practices, do they interrelate within the context of a single social formation? Which of them, if any, is dominant? and so on. This brings me to the more ambitious aspects of my paper, namely, an attempt to theorize the interrelationships between the economic, political, and ideological levels. The Althusserian outlines of this project should immediately be obvious. Let us begin to fill in the details.²

With the implosion of Stalinism and the alleged failure of Marxism, it became fashionable to relegate Althusser to the status of mere theoretical curiosity, as scholars turned to questions of meaning, identity, representation, and difference. The nature of the failure of Althusserianism has now been extensively analyzed and assessed (see Elliott), as have the reasons for the rejection of "older" preoccupations with social structures, production, and reproduction (see Callinicos 1993). It is becoming increasingly apparent that the abandonment of the Althusserian heuristic was premature and that, in the absence of broader Marxist perspectives, the "new" social movements are running aground for reasons that Marxists have always believed to be of fundamental importance (see Resch). Within the discipline of Hispanism, stubbornly conservative, anti-theoretical, and intellectually shallow, it was perhaps inevitable that the brilliantly executed and ongoing research program of the Althusserian Juan Carlos Rodriguez was destined to be ignored and silenced.³ One of my aims in this essay is to illustrate something of the power and range of Rodriguez's work, and to urge the need for its continuation.

The Language of Mercantilism

We will begin our study of Villalón with his Provechoso tratado de cambios y contrataciones de mercaderes y reprobation de la usura (1546), a work which, while an ideological product, lies in greatest proximity to economic practice. As the first part of its title indicates, what we have, in essence, is a mercantilist tract, characteristic of the painful transition from the self-sufficient natural economy of feudalism to the commodity-money economy of capitalism. As such, mercantilism marks a stage in the primitive accumulation of capital, when profit-bearing money was converted into capital and when, accordingly, professional commerce, formerly viewed as a sin, was increasingly looked upon as the main source of a nation's wealth, at least by the nascent bourgeoisie and the crown. The best way to augment this wealth, according to the Mercantilists, was by increasing the number of products capable of being converted into money, so as to stimulate a growth in exchange values. Predictably, they confused the latter with the physical form of that product which functions as money, namely, gold and silver. The result was the obsessive quest for precious metals that drove the Spanish imperialist enterprise.⁴

Necessarily, Villalón is constrained by these conceptual horizons. His attention remains naively fixated on the sphere of money circulation. By implication, money constitutes the principal component of the nation's wealth. However, the second part of the title of his thesis, roundly condemning usury, alerts us to the fact that, while a mercantilist text, Villalón's is a peculiarly Spanish variety thereof. One is struck in particular by the enormous disparity between the intricacy of the early European banking system, both national and international, to which Villalon proves to be a singularly instructive guide, and the author's manifest conviction that so much of the activity that he is attempting to regulate is, simply and quite literally, the work of the Devil. To explain this disparity, it is important to recall that the Provechoso tratado is a typical product of the Transition. In economic terms, this means that it is overdetermined both by a passionate capitalist thirst for money and by the prejudices and practices of slave and feudal economies. For the latter, the economic ideal was the self-sufficient, consumer economy, where exchange was confined to surpluses produced by individual economies and was carried out in natura.

It is this attachment to "nature" which explains the profoundly conservative tenor of Villalón's treatise, and the pre-eminence it accords to ethical values: "Que no es licito el usurar segun ley divina, humana ni natural" (Villalón 1546: fol. II [verso]) ("The fact is that it is not licit to practice usury, according to divine, human or natural law"). The virtues of maintaining proper distinctions, quintessentially those between the human and the divine, will not be lost upon subsequent capitalist ideologues. Without them, nonequivalent exchange and profit upon alienation, indispensable though they may be to the proper functioning of mercantilism, pose a moral dilemma. Equally insoluble and, on moral grounds, inexcusable is the distinction between reasonable and inflated prices (fol. xxiv [recto]). We will note in passing how Villalón's presupposition in the gradual devolution of society, from a state of natural perfection, contaminates his attitude toward the "natural" meaning of words. The aim is clearly to restore this natural meaning (e.g., fol. ix [verso]), and so to reconnect the exchange value of words with their use value or, as Villalón describes it elsewhere, with "la sustancia de las palabras" (1966: 166) ("the substance of words").

The visible anxieties regarding both kinds of currency, verbal and economic, is understandable. Just as ornate poetic fashions were allegedly debasing poetic idiom, and thereby raising insuperable barriers to popular participation in public affairs, so also was coinage being adversely affected by the huge quantities of metals being shipped into Europe. Such inflationary practices, on both accounts, were benefiting the commercial bourgeoisie as they impoverished the peasantry, craftsmen, and workers. Literary artisan par excellence, Villalón identifies with the latter, many of whom had been so ravaged as to be reduced to begging.

Of course, in no sense was Villalón a Physiocrat avant la lettre, persuaded that prices should be allowed to find their own natural level. On the contrary, he was simply continuing an established tradition: during the latter half of the Middle Ages a number of church decrees were issued which totally proscribed the levying of interest on loans, and which threatened usurers with excommunication. Suspicion attached to money to the extent that it became an end, rather than a means: ". . . el dinero no engendra de si algun fructo como todas las naturales mientes, pero produce de si ganancia mediante la buena industria de aquel que lo trata. Pues cosa injusta es que alguno goze interesse de industria y trabajo ajeno" (fol. v [recto]) (". . . in itself, money does not engender any fruit, in the way that natural minds do, but only produces profit through the good industry of whoever deals in it. For it is an unjust thing that anyone should enjoy the interest of another's work and industry"). Such statements should not be confused with the physiocratic preoccupation with production, sustained by a labor theory of value. Villalón's concern with use values, like that of his scholastic predecessor, is that of a person who remembers an organic community, in which individuals helped each other "freely" and spontaneously, that is to say, without "interest." The particular ferocity of his resistance is symptomatic of the rapid decline in the regional or town economy in the sixteenth century, occasioned by the expansion of the market and the growth of merchant capital.

The importance of distinguishing between the ideas of the Physiocrats and those of emergent Mercantilists such as Villalon is apparent when we consider their respective attitudes to the state. The former were advocates of free trade, arguing that the circulation of money (like that of words) regulates itself, and that the market is determined spontaneously, without state intervention. The latter were practical men who sought to influence the course of economic life through the control of money, to which end they enlisted the active assistance of an increasingly centralized state, bolstered by its own bureaucracy, army, and navy. In the struggle for domination over the world market, mercantilism stood for protectionism. It went hand in hand with regulation of all aspects of national economic life, imposing fixed prices and granting monopoly rights. In the end, it would elicit violent opposition from the rising and newly consolidated industrial bourgeoisie, which stood to benefit from free trade.

We might have expected that, in his one work dedicated to economic exchange, Viilalón would have opted for the generic form that foregrounds verbal exchange, otherwise the dialogue. It was, after all, the genre that he preferred in his more "literary" texts. However, he chose instead a more formal exposition. One possible explanation is that he operated in terms of a fundamental generic distinction between "theory" and "literature." If this were true, it would explain why his grammatical treatise, reviewed below, likewise avoided the dialogic genre. Be that as it may, commercial activity required its appropriate thematization. To begin with, economic exchange presupposes the existence of subjects of a particular kind, the ideological production of which fell to discursive theory and practice. In this respect, it is worth recalling the nonchalance and notorious unreliability of the feudal nobility over contractual issues. While as good as his word, upon which his name and honor depended, the feudal lord was not above treating agreements in a cavalier manner. A word, freely given, could also be freely withdrawn (see Mariscal 80-81). Such an attitude, needless to say, was entirely at odds with the world of international finance described in Villalón's treatise, which could only function if contractual obligations were rigorously respected. For this to happen, important ideological battles needed to be fought and won, as elsewhere Villalón showed every sign of realizing.

From “Serfs” to “Subjects”

Villalón's Provechoso tratado is an exercise rooted in the interior of the economic level, intent upon spelling out conditions indispensable to mercantilist exchange. However, it was within a context more ideologically remote from actual economic practice that the Spanish humanist produced certain other key notions and processes indispensable to the functioning of mercantilism. I have in mind El scholástico (c. 1540), a work which stands midway between Villalón's theoretical texts and his more ostensibly imaginative works. It consists basically of a dialogue between a number of distinguished academics and humanists, attached to the University of Salamanca, who retire to the country estate of the Duke of Alba, there to discuss issues of national importance regarding education. In effect they constitute what would today be understood as a governmental "think tank."

While seemingly removed from the economic level as such, the work's generic structure locks it into the process of exchange. Throughout its history, the bourgeoisie needs to operate via a "dialogic," ultimately contractual subject. True, at this stage, it is a Platonic soul, still mired in a discourse adapted to the transition, whose "fullness" contrasts with the emptiness of the classic bourgeois subject. It is, in the most literal sense, divinely inspired, by the god of friendship. But it already exhibits a mobility that will be subsequently put to good use socially: "Y afirmava [Acibiades] que a ningun hombre tocava este dios con su deidad, que no hiziesse del una metamorphosi: porque le secava de si y le transformava en la cosa en que el mas ponia su amor" (Villalón 1966: 22) ("And [Alcibiades] affirmed that this god, in its divinity, did not touch any man in whom it did not bring about a metamorphosis; because it drew him out from within himself and transformed him into the thing which was the object of his love"). In this respect, the "beautiful soul" stands opposed to the medieval "serf," "vassal," or "lord," which explains why Bonifacio, the estate manager, welcomes the guests with a lament on his role as palace servant. The visitors agree that serfs (siervos) are no longer appropriate in a Christian age: ". . . porque por qualquier ierro nos remuerde interiormente nuesta conciencia como reconozca ser contra nuestro buen natural" (29) (". . . because we are gnawed by our conscience, inwardly, for any mistake [we commit] that it recognizes as going against our innate moral sense"). They thereby alert us to the origins of the beautiful soul in the free Christian conscience, notably in the mystical traditions of the late Middle Ages, of which the whole phenomenon of knightly service—one free soul in the service of another— constitutes a more secular variant (see Rodríguez 1990: 78-81).

However, while medieval precedents certainly exist, it is also important to recognize the qualitatively distinct function of the beautiful soul during the sixteenth century. In a society characterized by increasing social (and geographical) mobility, the Absolutist State will seek to impose itself through impersonal but internalized values, as opposed to the personal violence that prevailed in medieval society. In other words, the individual conscience will constitute the social controlling mechanism that will gradually take the place of feudal "honor." One of the goals that El scholástico patently sets itself is to negotiate the process of substitution. Hernán Pérez de Oliva (14927-1533), possibly the leading dialoguist of Villalón's text, dominates what is a key exchange in this respect, concerning the true nature of nobility. Not surprisingly—as the author of a distinguished dialogue on the dignity of man—Oliva's contribution to the debate in El scholástico was both lucid and precise. For some, he explains, nobility is dependent upon lineage, for others, upon deeds performed in war, whereas others see it as conditional upon achievements in learning, "porque no toma la gloria por ajenos hechos" (118) ("because it is not parasitic upon the glory of others"). The first two criteria clearly privilege the aristocracy—the martial arts, of course, were traditionally associated with the nobility—doubtless for which reason Oliva makes no secret of his own preference for the third. As evidence he adduces examples of ancient civilizations which set particular store by the ennobling power of letters, irrespective of claims regarding individual ancestry (120). The message is clear: individual merit counts for far more than honors socially conferred.

Here, at least, positions are unambiguously defined. But during the transition the question of ideological allegiance was rarely so simple and straightforward. For example, it is Oliva who objects to the use of slaves as teachers for the young, somewhat surprisingly, given his position on the inherent nobility of the human spirit. To his credit, the schoolmaster is quick to spot the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Cristóbal de Villalón: Language, Education, and the Absolutist State
• Chapter 2 The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Making of the Spanish State
• Chapter 3 A Discourse on Wealth in Golden Age Literature
• Chapter 4 Patronage, the Parody of an Institution in Don Quijote
• Chapter 5 Printing and Reading Popular Religious Texts in Sixteenth-Century Spain
• Chapter 6 Emblematic Representation and Guided Culture in Baroque Spain: Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias
• Chapter 7 Intellectuals, the State, and the Public Sphere in Spain: 1700-1840
• Chapter 8 Constituting the Subject: Race, Gender, and Nation in the Early Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 9 Religious Subject-Forms: Nationalism, Literature, and the Consolidation of Moderantismo in Spain during the 1840s
• Afterword Back to the Future: Spain, Past and Present
• Contributors
• Index