Symbolic Economies of Spanish Costumbrismo: The Pintoresco and Types of “Speaker/Observer”

Abstract

This article looks to problematize the notions that critics have understood as central in the study of costumbrismo, for example: if its origins can be traced back to the 18^th century, if it is basically a conservative movement, and if it holds any historicist relation with posterior realist movements. From a Marxist point of view, I will argue that costumbrismo responds to the emergence of a subsumed middle class to Baroque ideological structures, unable to emancipate itself from the aristocratic prefiguration that took place in the Spanish social formations of the 19^th century. Analyzing the works of Larra and Mesonero Romanos I will observe how the ideological instance of the Ancient Regimen are filtered by the new petit-bourgeoise perspectives giving place to this “typical” costumbrista manifestation, not just in a diachronic but in a synchronic way, which means that they are not the teleological evolution of the Spanish style and “spirit” but the result of the diverse contradictions among the different instances that form the social whole. The “retratos” and “cuadros” costumbristas will be analyzed as symptoms of the ideological program that requires a renewal facing the growing modernization of the structures that sustain them, but it is unable to escape the organicist roots that form them. I will argue that the social, political, and economic structures of 19th century Spain produce this concrete aesthetic form of costumbrismo.