Andrea Villar del Valle, predoctoral researcher at the ADHUC Research Centre between 2020 and 2024, will defend her doctoral dissertation Towards a Postcolonial Memory: The Spanish Protectorate in Morocco and Memory Novels in Spain (2009-2021), supervised by Mònica Rius Piniés.
The dissertation examines the emergence of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco as a site of memory within Spain’s contemporary memory boom. Through the analysis of a set of novels published between 2009 and 2021, the study proposes a postcolonial approach to memory that questions the boundaries of the national framework and explores how literature intervenes in the construction of collective narratives about the past, especially within the framework of reparation and its entanglement with colonialism.
This research combines insights from memory studies, postcolonial theory, feminist criticism, and cultural studies, and is structured around three main axes: the transnational dimension of remembrance, the multidirectional approach as an alternative to competitive narratives of the past, and the cultural function of literature as an agent of memory. From this perspective, the dissertation offers a critique of the persistence of coloniality in memorial discourses and calls for a more inclusive and situated understanding of memory within the Spanish context.
