5 - Spain's Love-affair with England
from CULTURAL IMAGINARIES AND SPECIAL ATTACHMENTS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Summary
What does it signify to be an anglophile? More specifically, what did it signify to be an anglophile in Spain in the early twentieth century? Some pointers to the significance of England for Spain in this period have been given. What Collini has to say on the nature and functioning of the intellectual, as discussed in Chapter 1, is relevant here, given that he envisages the intellectual as having a ‘qualifying performance’ that subsequently endows him with authority to pronounce on topics outside his field (Collini 2006: 52–6). This apparent championing of amateurism, in contradistinction to the concept of authority, which might be conveyed in academic systems where a more acute sense of hierarchy obtains than in the English one, suggests a number of key skills that might be valued. Simplifying Spain's love-affair with England, we could posit it as consisting in an identification with individuality. Of the key skills valued one is the prioritization of mind or judgement over simple knowledge (in terms of the possession of facts, or of a corpus of knowledge). Another is the implied belief in the need to go beyond the capacity of the intellectual to pronounce on that which is not, strictly speaking, always within his original narrow academic or professional field. That is, it entails a sense that there could be a similar capacity in those who receive such pronouncements and to judge them accordingly, a capacity to understand, to make their own and thence to move on their own intellectual track.
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- Trafficking Knowledge in Early Twentieth-Century SpainCentres of Exchange and Cultural Imaginaries, pp. 95 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009