George Watson Public Lecture

Memory, Silence and the Re-Routing of Democracy in Spain: Federico García Lorca, the Spanish Civil War and the Law of Historical Memory

Thursday 29 August 2013, 5pm - 6.30pm
Terrace Room, Sir Llew Edwards Building (#14)
University of Queensland, St Lucia

What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society's responsibility to the disappeared? How do we live with the ghosts of history?

In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, co-founder and president of Spain's Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory or ARMH] — a national organisation assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain's desaparecidos or disappeared during the Civil War and its aftermath — wrote of 'the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy'.

This paper looks at the politics of memory in contemporary Spain. Using the search for the remains of Spain's most resonant twentieth-century writer as its central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first century Spain can be viewed as a move towards better understanding both the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence. The presentation resonates strongly with Australia's treatment of cultural memory.

About the Presenter
Professor Delgado is an academic, critic, curator and Editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. Her books include: “Other” Spanish Theatres (Manchester University Press, 2003) and Federico García Lorca (Routledge, 2008) as well as ten edited volumes — most recently A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Spanish Cinema 1973-2010: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory (Manchester University Press, 2013). She teaches at Queen Mary, University of London.

To be followed by refreshments, please RSVP to Stormy Wehi, s.wehi@uq.edu.au by 26th August 2013.