| Abstract | In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Joseba Gabilondo Joseba Gabilondo has taught at several universities: Duke University, Bryn Mawr University, SUNY Stony Brook and University of Florida. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno. He has published several articles on Hollywood cinema and blockbusters in the context of global culture, Spanish nationalism, postnationalism, masculinity, and queer theory. He has just finished an essay collection on contemporary Spanish-, American- and French-Basque literature entitled Nazioaren hondarrak (The Remnants of the Nation). He is currently working to finish a cultural and postnational history of Basque literatures from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century entitled Before Babel. Notes 1. I would like to acknowledge the help and counsel given by Elena Delgado, José María Portillo, Simon Doubleday, and Valerie Weinstein. Without their vast historiographic knowledge this article could not have been written. 2. I employ the preposition "neo-" in order to emphasize the new, globalized, and fundamentalist nature of liberalism/nationalism/imperialism in first-world states. Ultimately, once the historical record is settled, I believe we will resort to the traditional use of the terms without the preposition. 3. Even in the case of Giorgio Agamben and his elaboration of the figure of the "homo sacer" and of sovereignty (Homo Sacer), he leaps from the Middle Ages to modern times and the Holocaust without making a single reference to slavery. The resulting history re-centers Europe as the epistemological and historical site of universal biopolitics. Agamben's biopolitics, which lack a geopolitical dimension, has the effect of obliterating the Atlantic experience of slavery. Moreover, there are few references to contemporary migration in his work. For a more detailed elaboration of this problem see my forthcoming "Posnacionalismo y biopolítica." 4. Obviously the other main geopolitical ghosts of Spanish historiography are peripheral nationalisms and subaltern subjects (rural, anarchist, etc.). Gender/sexuality is a biopolitical ghost. Yet, my emphasis on Latin America is a first attempt to point in a different direction from which these other ghosts can also be addressed. 5. As Simon Doubleday argues, British Hispanism, because of its aura of empiricism, might also be complicit in the articulation of a nationalist/empiricist Spanish historiography and, furthermore, might represent the latter's institutional reference ("English Hispanists"). 6. In a more Lacanian way, we would have to say that Spanish nationalism imagines itself as being imagined by the Latin American (post)colony, which is, in turn, imagined by the Spanish empire. I insert the "(post)" in parenthesis because what is at stake is precisely the shift from colonial to postcolonial. Even though in Latin America, Spanish nationalism imagines itself being imagined by the (deceased) Spanish empire. 7. Another important line of inquiry would represent a feminist reconsideration of nationalist history. Although this is a working hypothesis, I would advance the thesis that, in the nineteenth century, the Spanish nationalist discourse shifts from masculinist ideas of "pueblo" as agent of independence to female tropes of "madre patria" as agent of imperialist loss. The fact that, at that time, women fought for citizenship, reproduction, and freedom of movement across the Atlantic, as testified by the scandals of "trata de blancas," demands a full feminist reconsideration of my present geopolitical approach. 8. As José María Portillo acknowledges, this Atlantic order does not only differentiate Spain from the colonies, but from the state itself. This anecdote is illustrative of a larger historical problem. When discussing the drafting of the liberal constitution of 1812, Portillo explains: The idea of local and territorial autonomy through the implementation of 'ayuntamientos' and 'diputaciones provinciales' was introduced in the Spanish constitution of 1812 following the suggestions of a Mexican deputy (Miguel Ramos Arizpe) inspired by the Basque foral institutions—Juntas generales and diputaciones. Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998. ———. Remnants of Auschwitz. The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books, 2002. Álvarez Junco, José. Mater Dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX. Madrid: Taurus, 2001. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Arias, J. "Los descendientes de Andalusíes dicen que la ley de extranjería...
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