ŠPANJOLSKA DRAMA NA PRIJELAZU STOLJEĆA: KONCEPT DRUGOGA U ANALIZI VLASTITOG IDENTITETA UNUTAR GLOBALNIH MIGRACIJA

Abstract

This paper studies the topic of global migrations in contemporary Spanish drama at the turn of the century, from the 1990s until the first decade of the 21st century, a period in which we can observe an increasing number of plays that face the problem of multicultural Spanish society. The thematic and structural characteristics of the dramatic corpus show how playwrights participate in social debate and inscribe new signs into the Spanish cultural space. Firstly, we describe the historical, cultural and social context of Spanish opening to migration flows from the European Union, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Secondly, the paper analyses how new circumstances affect the appearance of topics related to migration and Otherness as a complex phenomenon that combines geographical, social, economic, cultural and historical aspects united by the concept of national identity. The research reveals that the frequent motives of marginalization, intolerance and violence express an attitude towards foreigners, but at the same time outline the picture of the broader cultural background and ubiquitous polarization of Spanish society. In addition, we observe that the plays question  the migrant discourse based on the motifs of borders, travel, memory and forgetting as the opposition to the chronologically structured national  (hi)story. The playwrights question the status of the individual in the new geopolitical, social and cultural circumstances, as well as the sustainability of  the monolithic national narrative within the new global order. One part of the dramatic opus also uses postmodern techniques in the deconstruction of  that official narrative, whereby the emphasis is placed on the deconstruction of the national discourse on which the idea of a stable cultural identity is  built in opposition to the foreign, that is, the Other.