Original scientific paper
IN THE BLOOD: PERFORMANCE AND IDENTITY IN THE CATALAN TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY
Dorothy Noyes
; The Ohio State University, Columbus
Abstract
The Patum of Berga is a Corpus Christi festival featuring the danced
combats of effigies and masked figures, performed since the early
17th century in an industrial town in the Catalan Pyrenees. During
the Spanish transition, the festival attracted massive participation
from all over Catalonia, becoming a focus of democratic and
nationalist resistance. This article describes the gendered character
of the political struggle over the festival, showing how the limits of
the Oedipal metaphor create a problem for community reproduction.
The author explores the conservative nationalist and Francoist
contexts of the feminization of the Patum, the moment of
generational confrontation during the Transition, and the subsequent
problem of imagining a new, nonrepressive social order.
Keywords
transition in Catalonia; Corpus Christi festival in Berga
Hrčak ID:
33091
URI
Publication date:
9.6.2003.
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