Description
Conflict between Catalonia and Spain has made the headlines of leading newspapers repeatedly over the past years. Considered a thorny issue, much can be used as an argument - or counter-argument - from the Spanish and Catalan sides depending on what is considered generally true, or valid. Neither is essentially pure, unmixed, genuine. In fact, much of what it means to be Catalan or Spanish could be regarded as mutually constitutive (starting from the concepts of nationalism and identity themselves). Thus, one concept cannot be conceived in the absence of the other: they actually produce and are reproduced by the other, like in a play of mirrors, in which meaning is somehow ‘moisty’, blurred, escaping clear-cut definitions.
Underlying notions of being Catalan or Spanish are concepts such as identity, nation, community, borders, and others alike. Permeating the classification, however, lies the violence of favouring one term over the other, in an arbitrary process in which identity is privileged over alterity, essence over appearance, inside over outside.
In the attempt to broaden the scope of discussion, this paper sets from Derrida’s notions of différance, trace, spectre, and deconstruction to analyse the current situation in Catalonia by casting a deconstructive look on both Catalan and Spanish identities. It attempts to investigate how they are constituted and also trace further implications of the continuation of this division, in social and political terms.
