The Politics of Food and Hunger in Spanish Literature, 1945–2015*

Abstract

In Francoist Spain, food and hunger were empathically politicized and, though conspicuously absent from State discourses, Spain’s infamous ‘hunger years’ (1939–1952) pervade Spanish fiction. Literature is a particularly illuminating medium for (re)constructing (post)memories of food and hunger, as historiography underscores how trauma, shame and censorship refract memories of hunger. By interrogating the politics of food and hunger in the post-Civil War novel, fictionalized memoirs and postmemory texts, this article unpacks how Republican, Nationalist, sexual, gender and memory politics intersect, building on the burgeoning field of food cultural studies in Spain.