Basque Identity Politics in the Films of Julio Medem

Abstract

I have here attempted to restructure and revivify the idea of identity politics, resurrecting it from critics who have dismissed it as essentialist or even erroneous. A theoretical armature of four pillars is proposed: Mette Hjort’s notion of “banalaboutness”; the New Historicist “anecdote”; Fredric Jameson’s concept of “cognitive mapping”; and Judith Butler’s psychoanalytic re-reading of identity. This hermeneutic is used to reinterpret the works of Julio Medem, in particular his La pelota vasca (2003); Medem has constructed a metanarrative of Basque identity as a tonic to the idea of a homogenic and centralized Spain centered on Madrid.