The Sacred and Modernity in Urban Spain

This book explores how modernity, the urban, and the sacred overlap in fundamental ways in contemporary Spain. Urban spaces have traditionally been seen as the original sites of modernity, history, progress, and a Weberian systematic disenchantment of the world, while the sacred has been linked to the natural, the rural, mythical past origins, and exemption from historical change. This collection problematizes such clear-cut distinctions as overlaps between the modern urban and the sacred in Spanish culture are explored throughout the volume. Placed in the periphery of Europe, Spain has had a complex relationship with the concept of modernity and commonly understood processes of modernization and secularization, thus offering a unique case-study of the interaction between the modern and the sacred in the city.

Launches a scholarly conversation on the relationship between urban spaces, modernity, and the sacred Connects modern cities to a discussion of the concept of the sacred that is not necessarily related to any specific religion or god Examines literature, film and television, architecture, and the conflicting elements of the urban soundscape in modern Spain Problematizes clear-cut distinctions to show how modernity, the urban, and the sacred overlap fundamentally in contemporary Spain

Autorentext
Antonio Cordoba is Assistant Professor at Manhattan College, USA. His research focuses on the interaction between modernity, wonder, and the sacred in Latin American culture.
Daniel García-Donoso is Assistant Professor at The Catholic University of America, USA. His work explores the relationship between religion and culture in modern and contemporary Spain.

Inhalt
INTRODUCTION; Antonio Cordoba and Daniel García-Donoso.- CHAPTER 1. The Sacred in Madrid's Soundscape: Towards an Aural Hygiene, 1856-1907; Samuel Llano.- CHAPTER 2. Sacred, Sublime, and Supernatural: Religion and the Spanish Capital in Nineteenth-Century Fantastic Narratives; Wan Sonya Tang.- CHAPTER 3. The Modern Usurer Consecrates the City: Circulation and Displacements in the Torquemada Series; Sara Muñoz-Muriana.- CHAPTER 4. Spirituality and Publicity in Barcelona, 1929: Performing Citizenship between Tradition and Avant-Garde; Alberto Medina.- CHAPTER 5. The Places of the Subject: Abjection and the Transcendent City in Nada and La plaça del Diamant; Sarah Thomas.- CHAPTER 6. Living Off the Exception: Biopolitical Modernity and Sacratio in Francoist Spain; William Viestenz.- CHAPTER 7. Urban Avatars of El Maligno: Sacredness in Álex de la Iglesia's El día de la bestia and Manuel Martín Cuenca's Caníbal; Antonio Cordoba.- CHAPTER 8. Searching the Soul of the City in Rafael Chirbes's Crematorio; Daniel García-Donoso.- CHAPTER 9. A New Heaven for a New Earth: Religion in the Contemporary Spanish Novel; Nathan Richardson.- CHAPTER 10. Media Landscapes of a Well-Dressed Multitude: The City and the Individual in Velvet and El tiempo entre costuras; Esteve Sanz and Tatiana Alekseeva.- AFTERWORD. The Temple and the City: Contaminations of the Sacred in Modernista Barcelona; Joan Ramon Resina.