To this day, there is not a history of Basque literature in English. Furthermore, it would not be too difficult to translate some of the most accomplished ones written in Basque or Spanish (Aldekoa, Urkizu). Although there is an immediate need of such a work, this book is not another traditional history of Basque literature This book is meant to be a cultural literary history written against the nationalist grain of understanding Basque literature as solely written in Basque and of discarding literature written by Basques in state languages such as Spanish or French as belonging to the respective state canons, a tendency that is prevalent not only in the Basque Country but in Europe and the world at large. At this point, there is not enough information and discussion to complete a comprehensive history of Basque literatures, i.e. a postnational history of the literatures written by the Basques in all their languages. Therefore this book is only a first step towards a postnational literary history; its completion made me realize that further research, writing, and translation is required. Here, I simply advance several ideas and hypotheses that I would like to bring forward, so that readers can discuss, criticize and implement them, and, turn this book into part of a larger collective effort. Therefore, the reader is encouraged to contact me (joseba@joseba.net) and provide comments, suggestions, and criticism. The reader will also be able to see further developments and translations at my website: www.joseba.net.

To my knowledge, no postnational history of literature exists in Europe---and in this sense this project presents innovative ideas that might affect or change most literatures in Europe. The concepts of “literatures of the Americas” (xx), “Latin American literature” (Gonzalez Echeverria, Valdes), or African literatures (xx) come closest to a postnational understanding of literature in the Western hemisphere---and yet, even in these cases, minority literatures written in other languages than Spanish, French, and English are still marginalized or omitted tout court under the umbrella theory of postcolonialism, which gives preference to imperialist languages under the terms Franchophone, Anglophone, etc.

Since this book has as a goal to promote a more extensive postnational discussion of Basque literatures, I decided to present it as a regular book but also to add a pedagogical format at the end, with pedagogical guides and questions at the end (see the last section, “Study Notes”). I do not think that a theoretical and historical presentation should require of a book such as this to forgo a pedagogical approach. Thus, this book is meant to grow both as a research project and a pedagogical model. Minority literatures such as the Basques cannot afford to dismiss any of their potential readers or venues of dissemination.

Although Basques might not read much literature, especially in times of globalization, Basque literature---or literatures---is more than a literary corpus, a reading practice, a cultural dominant or even a private pleasure. Basque literature is at the core of Basque politics and history, for Basque identity and difference have been formed around certain texts, certain ideas, read by few but discussed by most. A history of Basque literatures is more about the writing of a difference, one that is not ethnic, properly speaking, neither simply cultural, religious, or political. At least since the Renaissance, Basque language has been written and summoned in other languages to articulate several geopolitical differences in so many different historical ways, that they have to be rethought retrospectively from our new situation in globalization where the nation-state is in crisis and new global differences are emerging. This difference, has always been traumatic to the surrounding states (specially Spain) and, more generally Europe, and therefore it allows us to understand not only the formation of the Basque Country, but also the imperialist history of states such as Spain and France, as well as the colonial and nationalist formation of Europe, in which Basques played the role of the “oldest Europeans,” or “the true European natives” in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries even when it came to theorize such a fundamental concept as democracy (in the case of Rousseau and the scotish political theorist).

In the last century, the twentieth, for example, Basque language and literature was invoked and historicized, willingly or unwillingly, as the political and cultural heart of the nation (Krutwig). Literature was basically the textual representation of Basque national identity, an identity that would go all the way back to the Renaissance and, sometimes, further back to an oral culture that supposedly originated in the Neolithic (Oteiza). However, this literary practice and interpretation has reached a standstill, a crisis, in the Basque Country, Spain, France, and the diaspora. Because of globalization, we are entering a new phase that is reminiscent of the Renaissance when differences were not understood nationally yet. Thus, we have to revisit Basque literature, not as the chronicle of a hypothetical “Basque nation,” but rather as the historical witness of a Basque difference that, these days, we know is historical but, nevertheless, we are not sure yet how to interpret, since it no longer is nationalist. Therefore this situation requires that we rethink Basque difference anew, altogether, in its historicity from the irruption of globalization and postnationalism. Perhaps the goal is to conclude that there no longer is such a thing as Basque history or Basque difference---and other more biopolitical formations are defining our desires and politics. Yet a new global and postnational exploration is necessary in order to conclude with a new, negative or positive, history of things Basque. Therefore, a new postnational and global history of Basque literatures is crucial to situate ourselves, the Basques, as either Basque or otherwise, historically and globally while, at the same time, offering a Basque reading of globalization, Europe, the Americas and the neoliberal states that constitute the Basque Country.

Postnationalism

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has developed the idea of postnationalism following the original proposal of xx. According to Habermas, there is a teleology from nationalist to postnationalist societies in Europe. Reflecting on the nation-state and the new unified European future, Habermas reevaluates the national collectivity and concludes:

If this form of collective identity was due to a highly abstractive leap from the local and dynastic to national and then to democratic consciousness, why shouldn’t this learning process be able to continue? … These experiences of successful forms of social integration have shaped the normative self-understanding of European modernity into an egalitarian universalism that can ease the transition to postnational democracy’s demanding context of mutual recognition for all of us---we, the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of a barbaric nationalism. (102-03)

Habermas emphasizes that this evolution brings about multicultural societies, which also have to recognize collective rights: “Multicultural societies require a ‘politics of recognition’ because the identity of each individual citizen is woven together with collective identities, and must be stabilized in a network of mutual recognition” (74). Habermas always means to solve the politics of recognition within the framework of the State wherein each individual is also a citizen. Yet, when referring specifically to the Basque (and Irish) case, Habermas dismisses it as a nationalist problem of the past, which does not require a “politics of recognition: “Here I am not referring primarily to nationalist conflicts such as those in the Basque regions of Spain, or in Northern Ireland. Nothing of the seriousness and gravity of these conflicts is lost if one sees them as the delayed consequen