The Truth Imagined: The Imposture of Enric Marco as Portrayed in Javier Cercas’ El impostor.
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Date
2016-10-27
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Abstract
In his El impostor, Javier Cercas, the prolific Spanish writer, sought to unmask Enric Marco, who had lived his public life as a holocaust survivor and anti-Franco crusader, as an imposter. Couched in epistemological (fiction vs reality) and moralistic (truth vs. falsehood) terms, Marco’s imposture is debated against the backdrop of Spain’s most recent history: the Civil war and its aftermath, the Franco dictatorship, the Transición and the fervor of the Memoria histórica. In this presentation, I will read El impostor in light of three questions: a) What is an imposture b) Is an imposture justified and justifiable, and c) Is a public imposture the sign of the times.
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Seminar
Keywords
holocaust survivor, anti-Franco crusader, epistemological, Memoria histórica