A critical analysis about the image
that society has elaborated
about itself.
This rigorous work
tackles, with a tinge of irreverence, a trait of contemporary society that
perhaps historians have not reflected upon sufficiently: the overabundance of
historical celebrations, collective commemorations and patriotic anniversaries
of all types with the consequent exercise of cohesion around a specific notion
of ethnicity, nation, people or collective myth.
All celebrations
aspire to mobilize a specific memory, granting great importance to certain
events and forgetting others. As the author points out, the anniversaries of
the independence of countries, universal exhibitions, or forums – such as the
one that took place over a period of several months in Barcelona in 2004 – are
an excellent opportunity to explore the ethical and political aspects of the
history of the present, to illuminate the clichés upon which there is a wish to
consolidate power and, above all, to critically analyze the image – or perhaps
the illusion – that a society elaborates about itself.
“A hilarious and
splendid meditation about the forms, phobias, knowledge, routines, common
places and deficiencies with which – still today
– we approach our country’s history, a body made up of preconceptions,
vagueness, false truths and half truths repeated ad absurdum.” Letras Libres
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