Part I
Transatlantic relations
1 Challenging pasts, exploring futures
âRace,â gender, and class in the fin-de-siĂšcle essays of Rosario de Acuña, ConcepciĂłn Gimeno de Flaquer, and BelĂ©n SĂĄrraga
Christine Arkinstall
In the Spanish fin de siĂšcle, âraceâ was an indeterminate term that drew on conservative pasts but also projected utopian futures. As JosĂ© Ălvarez Junco elucidates, by the mid-nineteenth century, Spainâs early modern obsession with the cleanliness of blood was merging with a new racism anchored in European imperialism and nationalist concerns (247). Throughout that same century, however, the gradual gaining of independence by Spainâs American colonies, abolitionism, and the emergence of movements such as anarchism, socialism, and early feminism fostered more inclusive concepts of nation and ârace.â The proliferation of racial theories, then, coincided with the rise of nationalisms, workersâ movements, and feminist aspirations.
Joshua Goode has examined how by the late nineteenth century discourses on âraceâ in Spain privileged the concept of fusion, embraced by all regardless of political affiliation. However, accounts of how different ethnic groups in Iberia had fused revealed diverse sociopolitical positions. Following the failure of the First Republic (1873â1874), and particularly Spainâs defeat in the Spanish-American War (1898), liberals looked to the emerging social sciences, especially anthropology, to forge racial theories for Spainâs regeneration, to be founded on scientific education and national unity (Goode 5â16). A counterpoint to this narrative of national progress was one of degeneration, which mapped the parameters of empire, the middle class, and sexual identities through identified deviancies in ârace,â the economy, and sexualities (McClintock 44). Hence in the late nineteenth century, allegedly deviant classes were categorized according to a ârhetoric of race,â while supposed hierarchies of âraceâ also depended on notions of gender (54â55). Then, as now, ârace,â class, and gender constituted interlocking sociocultural constructions that marked who should and should not belong to hegemonic groups and nations.1
The three Spanish-born figures in this study, Rosario de Acuña (1850â1923), ConcepciĂłn Gimeno de Flaquer (ca. 1850â1919), and BelĂ©n SĂĄrraga (ca. 1873â1950), have attracted scholarly attention primarily for their feminist writings. A significant proportion of their works also addresses âraceâ and class, issues that impact on their discussions of gender and highlight startling differences in their sociopolitical visions. Acuña and SĂĄrraga were both freethinkers, proponents of federal republicanism, and connected to workersâ movements. Despite these important similarities, however, Acuña identified primarily with Europe and Iberia and wrote on Latin America without first-hand knowledge, whereas SĂĄrragaâs long residence and extensive travels throughout Latin America between 1908 and 1931 contributed to her rejection of Eurocentricity and affirmation of Latin Americaâs autonomy and diversity.2 As for Gimeno de Flaquer, similarly well-traveled in Latin America, and resident of Mexico from 1881 until 1893, âraceâ constitutes the linchpin for her radical stance on Latin Americaâs colonization and her ambivalent position on women from Spainâs former colonies. The essays of Acuña, Gimeno de Flaquer, and SĂĄrraga enrich our understanding of racial thought in Spainâs fin de siĂšcle, because scholarship has tended to focus on the same consecrated writers, principally male, from the âGeneration of â98â (Goode 80). Among the very few female writers studied in this context, Emilia Pardo BazĂĄn and Carmen de Burgos predominate, although Jennifer Jenkins Woodâs 2014 book brings into the discussion lesser known Spanish authorsâ engagement with the Americas, such as Emilia Serrano (ca. 1833â1923), Eva Canel (1857â1932), and MarĂa Eulalia de BorbĂłn (1864â1958). Works by Acuña, Gimeno, and SĂĄrraga, little studied with respect to intersectionality, stress how class and particularly âraceâ invite revision of their respective modalities of feminism and insert womenâs voices more firmly into Spainâs fin de siĂšcle debates on racial thought.
Spainâs regeneration and degeneration are central, gendered themes in the corpus of Acuña, a member of the âGeneration of 1898,â which embraced an ethos of ethical virility against early modernismâs perceived decadence (Kirkpatrick 119). Acuña evinces similar notions when approaching the degeneration of âraceâ in her 1887 essay, âInvasiĂłn de los bĂĄrbaros (cuadro del señor Ulpiano Checa presentado en la ExposiciĂłn de Pinturas)â (âThe Barbariansâ Invasion [a painting by Ulpiano Checa at the Art Exhibition]â): her response to Checaâs painting, La invasiĂłn de los bĂĄrbaros (los hunos en Roma) (The Barbariansâ Invasion [the Huns in Rome]).3 While conventionally civilization corresponds to imperial Rome and barbarity to the invading Huns, Acuña reverses these equivalences. Epitomizing masculinity, the Huns, with their âcurtida musculaturaâ (honed muscles) are now harbingers of progress, âuna raza pletĂłrica de vida, que viene a encauzar la corriente humana por los anchos caminos de la perfecciĂłnâ (1121; a race, bursting with life, that comes to guide humanity along broad paths toward perfection). Conversely, an effeminate, prostituted, imperial Rome symbolizes the degeneration of the former Roman Republicâs pure ideals (1118â19). Acuñaâs closing question, which asks who, like Checa, will represent contemporary Spainâs decadence (1123), suggests that the essay mirrors Acuñaâs own critique of Restoration Spain, her vindication of a Spanish republic, and her validation of her cultural cohortâs dreams for Spainâs advancement.
Degeneration and gender intersect with class in Acuñaâs 1887 essay, âLa rameraâ (âThe Prostituteâ).4 Drawing on evolutionary theory, Acuña compares the prostitute to a young gorilla as both were said to lack reason (1104). Nevertheless, Acuña rejects the sexual double standard to extend this analogy to the prostituteâs male clients, âuna reminiscencia de las razas simiasâ (a throwback to simian species), declaring that they also prostitute themselves (1105, 1107). For Acuña the prostitute and her client represent an individualistic desire opposed to the family, nation, and âraceâ (1108). They thus mesh with her critique of the city for its excessive consumerism and social corruption, and her advocation of country life and the industrious family, whose pivotal figure is the scientifically educated wife and mother.5 While the prostitute contaminates âel impulso generatriz de la raza humanaâ (the reproductive instinct of the human race), the educated wife is engaged in an âaltĂsima, pura y redentora misiĂłnâ (1097; exalted, pure, and redeeming mission). Hence the opposition that Acuña establishes between the working-class prostitute and highly educated wife speaks for the regulation of desire in familial and national interests to eliminate disorder and foster harmonious unity. If, as Anne McClintock asserts, abjection constitutes âthat liminal state that hovers on the threshold of body and body politicâ (72), the prostitute and her client are incarnations of abject liminality that define who may not belong to a nation.
The final section exposes gender and âraceâ as arbitrary markers that respectively construct hierarchies within the same âraceâ and among different âraces.â Foregrounding anthropological findings, Acuña affirms that scientific theory uses differences in the size of the brains of European men and women to mark an alleged masculine superiority and feminine inferiority. However, this gendered ordering does not pertain when science considers men and women from so-called savage peoples, whose brain size is represented as similar now that the hierarchy between European and non-European, civilization and barbarity, is founded on âraceâ:
[L]a ciencia con exactitudes numĂ©ricas nos señala una desproporciĂłn inmensa, en perjuicio del femenino, entre el cerebro de la mujer europea y del hombre europeo [âŠ] y una desproporciĂłn insensible y, en la mayorĂa de las razas, inapreciable, entre el de la mujer y el hombre de los pueblos salvajes [âŠ] la cuestiĂłn de la inferioridad queda reducida a simple condiciĂłn de tiempo y de medio (1111â12; science, with mathematical precision, shows us a tremendous difference, detrimental to the female sex, between the brains of the European woman and European man [âŠ] and a negligible differenceâindeed, indistinguishable in most racesâbetween the brains of women and men from savage peoples [âŠ] the question of inferiority boils down to a simple matter of time and environment)6
Acuña therefore indirectly argues that inequalities stem from sociohistorical contexts, âtime and environment,â rather than a supposedly natural inferiority (522).
In the late nineteenth-century European imaginary, degeneration and progress were mutually dependent concepts. âThe distance along the path of progress,â McClintock affirms, âcould be measured only by the distance others lagged behindâ (46). Acuñaâs 1881 piece, âLos intermediarios (boceto)â (âThe Intermediaries [A Primitive Modelâ), centers on those who threaten her vision of an enlightened, liberal Spain: intermediaries or halfway entities who blur the boundaries between progressiveness and conservativism, rationalism and superstition.7 Again authorizing her discussion through a framework of evolutionary science, Acuña adopts the traditionally masculine position identified with the seeing subject and represents herself as a kind of anthropologist: an âhĂĄbil observadorâ (211; skillful observer) or âobservador racionalâ (225; rational observer).8 While science has unveiled the stages of natural evolution from the ape to man, there does not exist, Acuña contends, a comparable way of measuring differences in rationality among humans: âA partir de esa especie de intermediarios perdidos entre el mono y el hombre, ya no se reconoce ninguna gradaciĂłn en la escala de los racionalesâ; she concludes: â[T]odos son hombres; desde el hotentote hasta Miguel Ăngelâ (207; all are men, from the Hottentot to Michelangelo). Despite her apparently racist reference to the so-called Hottentots or South African Khoikhoi, her concern is not to search for the intermediaries of the human race among different âracesâ but within the same (208).
Acuña defines intermediaries as âverdaderos hĂbridos que arrastran su organismo por las esferas de las mĂĄs nebulosas constitucionesâ; that is, unformed, low, hybrid creatures between the irrational and man, instinct, and intelligence (207â09), a mere âbocetoâ (primitive model) of an intelligent, rational being. Again refuting an inferiority identified with the female sex and lower class, Acuña emphasizes that the intermediary is found in both sexes and more likely among the aristocracy (210â11), in keeping with her critique of a decadent nobility. Affectation and an indiscriminate gaze characterize the male intermediary (213). His lack of discrimination extends to national affiliation in that he lacks an identifiable nationalityââno tiene patria conocidaââdue to his cosmopolitanism, interpreted as his need to denigrate his country and contaminate his native tongue with foreign imports. The result, Acuña declares, is a âmezcolanza monstruosaâ (monstrous mixture) and a âcarcoma cosmopolita que invade el habla castiza y peculiar de cada naciĂłnâ (216â17; cosmopolitan woodworm that invades the purity and distinctiveness of a nationâs language). This criticism of mixture is surprising in a writer who sought a cosmopolitan federation of nations and shows Acuña as representative of a cosmopolitanism founded more on a universal humanism of common ground than cultural diversity. Her critique also mirrors the belief of Spanish liberals and conservatives that linguistic purity was essential to a distinctive national spirit and underlines Acuñaâs privileging of national unity as essential to the liberal project.9
Purity reappears in relation to the upper classes: the most dangerous intermediaries are the governing elites or âpadres de la patriaâ (fathers of the nation), whose lack of correspondence between deeds and words results in a âmezcolanza informe y ridĂculaâ (224â25; unformed, ridiculous mixture). Acuñaâs own use here of âridĂculaâ is paradoxical, because earlier in her argument she had highlighted that the female intermediary differentiates herself from others of allegedly inferior class by using specific adjectives like âridĂculoâ: â[T]odo lo que no sea ella es cursi, vulgar, estrafalario, ridĂculo, provocativo [âŠ] aquella que usa en su conversaciĂłn los adjetivos expresados es esencialmente intermediaria del racionalâ (220; all that she is not is pretentiously affected, vulgar, eccentric, ridiculous, provocative [âŠ] she who uses in her conversation the adjectives indicated is essentially an intermediary of the rational human being). It is relevant that the term cursi, like Acuñaâs intermediary, embodied the uncertain composition of fin-de-siĂšcle middle-class society, whose âNew Regime,â as Stephanie Sieburth remarks, was âa false middle ground, neither here nor there [âŠ] neither developed nor underdeveloped, neither traditional nor modernâ (39, 233). The female cursiâs aspirations to an upper-class status beyond her means supported a stratified society inimical to greater social equality, a hierarchical structure that all Acuñaâs writings critique.
Although intermediaries mark the stages that humanity must traverse to...