El exilio como experiencia parahistórica. A propósito de La gallina ciega de Max Aub

This article examines the travel journal written by the prominent Spanish intellectual Max Aub, following his two months journey to Spain in 1969 after 30 years of exile in Mexico. There is a critical agreement about Aub's anti-realist and avant-garde literature. In my article I look for an explanation about this formal decision. It seems to me that his rhetorical strategies result from his own understanding of history as discourse. This textual nature of history, in turn, is consistent with the marginal position of the exiled writer who by definition is contesting the dominat narratives about her/his homeland. I therefore apply a postmodern notion of history to explore two main questions in Max Aub's journal: the reason for the changes experienced by Spain since the 1930s (and quite rightly Aub exlains that these changes are the consequence of the project of modernization implemented by Francoism since the late 50s) and the role of the intellectual in the politics of memory in Spain.