Esta tesis doctoral se divide en cuatro partes, que tratan sobre lo siguiente: 1) Política y filosofía, 2) El problema catalán, 3) Estética y filosofía, 4) Literatura y plástica.En la primera parte se explica la doctrina de Unamuno, Ortega y D'Ors y se examinan los postulados de los que parten estos tres autores. Se comparan los diversos puntos de vista de cada uno y cómo desembocan en tres actitudes filosóficas distintas. Se observa en qué se distinguen estos planteamientos y cómo incide su filosofía en sus ideas políticas.Esta primera parte no trata de ser una exposición exhaustiva de la actitud vitalista de Unamuno, la raciovitalista de Ortega y la intelectualista de D'Ors; tarea que ya han desarrollado con anterioridad otros autores. Citamos algunos autores que examinan aspectos relacionados con los temas expuestos. Los autores son teóricos importantes para comprender el pensamiento filosófico español de fines del siglo pasado e inicios del siglo XX y su relación con el europeo. Extraemos del conjunto de su pensamiento únicamente los rasgos filosóficos que ayuden a comprender su política.La segunda parte gira en torno al problema catalán, el cual contrasta con las diversas actitudes políticas de estos autores. Debido a que sus actitudes políticas se hallan influidas por los problemas de su tiempo, se les incluye en su contexto hist6rico. Se habla de las perspectivas políticas europeísta y españolista y, al examinarse los nexos Cataluña-España, se muestra el contraste ideológico que existe en torno al centralismo y al separatismo.El estudio incide sobretodo en los años veinte y en la Segunda República. Se exponen las opiniones de Unamuno, Ortega y D'Ors sobre el citado tema y se aportan datos documentales extraídos de los periódicos de la época. Unamuno adopta una actitud centralista sobre la autonomía catalana, Ortega es partidario del regionalismo, y D'Ors pasa de defender el nacionalismo catalán a desentenderse de dicho asunto.La tercera parte muestra la conexión de sus ideas filosóficas y estéticas. Se contrastan ambos aspectos y para ello se examinan: el lenguaje en Unamuno, la teoría del conocimiento en Ortega y los posibles nexos entre la metafísica y el Novecentismo en D'Ors, porque estos temas ayudan a comprender la teoría estética de estos autores, la cual también se explica.La cuarta parte se refiere a literatura y plástica. Unamuno pertenece a la Generación del 98 y coincide en algunos puntos con los escritores de este grupo. Ortega tiene un estilo literario que le acerca al Modernismo y D'Ors es el padre del Novecentismo. D'Ors y Unamuno escribieron numerosas novelas con personajes que nos permiten llegar a comprender su filosofía y su ética.La tesis termina con unas conclusiones que muestran el contraste que existe en sus planteamientos políticos y en sus visiones estéticas. Además se relacionan los aspectos políticos y estéticos que se han ido exponiendo a lo largo del trabajo, pues la actitud política de cada uno condiciona la estética y viceversa.El estudio aporta una nueva interpretación de estos tres autores y a la par ofrece una visión documentada de las opiniones que estos hombres tuvieron sobre Cataluña. También se justifican sus planteamientos estéticos. En definitiva, se comparan tres personajes (Unamuno, Ortega y D'Ors) que son básicos para comprender la política y la estética española de finales del siglo XIX y de comienzos del XX.

Whereas contemporary debates in Latin American studies addressing sovereignty often focus on dictatorships and the transitions to democratic governments in Latin America in the late twentieth century, Sovereignties Displaced: Avant-Garde Prose and Authoritarianism in Spain, Chile, and Argentina (1923-1936) adopts a transatlantic framework and directs critical attention to the cultural production of the interwar period. The historical and cultural events preceding and following 1929 are connected to World War I, the political crisis of democratic systems, and the global socioeconomic instability of the period. The three countries studied in the present work would be affected by these conditions, sharing an almost synchronic development of the authoritarian governments of Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain (1923-1930), of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in Chile (1927-1931), and José Félix Uriburu in Argentina (1930-1932). Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism and the decay of parliamentary institutions characterizing this epoch condition and inscribe the political essays and avant-garde novels composed by the intellectuals and writers analyzed in this study: from Spain, María Zambrano (1904-1991), Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963), and Benjamín Jarnés (1888-1949); from Chile, Alberto Edwards Vives (1874-1932), Juan Emar (1893-1964), and Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948); and from Argentina, Ramón Doll (1896-1970), Norah Lange (1905-1972), and Roberto Arlt (1900-1942). It should be noted that while considering national circumstances, my argumentation is divided into sections organized not by country, but rather by subject matter: a methodological and theoretical introduction, three analytical chapters, and concluding remarks. Established critical assessments of the avant-gardes, as offered by experts like Renato Poggioli (1907-1963), have underscored that democratic forms of government would provide the initial conditions of possibility of the historical avant-gardes. Other scholars, however, have recognized the interdependency of early twentieth century artistic discourses, revolutionary ideas, and authoritarianism. Informed by the theorization of sovereignty and democracy of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), and the concept of community of Roberto Esposito (1950-), my research examines, in political essays and vanguard novels, the opposition of individual vis-à-vis collective forms of rule. The texts of my corpus manifest a recurrent concern relating to the tension between self-rule and collective-rule, a dynamic which organizes and destabilizes avant-garde formations themselves. Consequently, I analyze the philosophical and political ramifications of these authors’ defense, negation, or destabilization of the individual-collective opposition in the context of the deterioration of parliamentarism. In my first chapter, I examine the following essays that represent a range of political positions from the interwar years: Horizonte del liberalismo (1930) by María Zambrano, Liberalismo en la literatura y la política (Con una segunda edición de: “Democracia mal menor”) (1934, n/d) by Ramón Doll, and La fronda aristocrática en Chile (1928) by Alberto Edwards Vives. Framed by the sociological assessments of José Ortega y Gasset in La rebelión de las masas (1930), this chapter considers these essayists’ observations regarding mass politics and the role of political and economic elites. I foreground the ethical problems relating to these authors’ conceptions of the human subject and their concomitant formulations of governance, deriving from various ideological orientations. The essayists’ comparable anxieties regarding the limits of democratic politics reveal the complexities of the period and serve as a springboard for the subsequent chapters that study the politics of avant-garde novels. In my second chapter, shifting from essayistic discourse to vanguard fiction, I analyze philosophical oppositions central to the configuration of sovereignty, and to the theory and practice of democracy. These tensions organize various components of the following novels: Un año (1935) by Juan Emar (pseudonym of Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi), 45 días y 30 marineros (1933) by Norah Lange, and El caballero del hongo gris (1928) by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. I demonstrate that, although these narratives do not contain explicit references to the emergence of authoritarianism and the erosion of parliamentarism of the period, these narratives are structured by problems that have implications for a thinking of issues relating to sovereignty and democracy. These novels similarly present how individuals interact with groups, such that it becomes imperative to consider the political consequences of these relations in order to critique, for example, fraternalistic and nationalistic notions of political filiation. My final chapter studies the narrative presentations of radical political projects that aim to restructure society in Los siete locos (1929) by Roberto Arlt, La próxima (1934) by Vicente Huidobro, and Lo rojo y lo azul (1932) by Benjamín Jarnés. In contrast to the narratives included in the second chapter, these avant-garde novels establish an explicit dialogue with the conditions of crisis of the interwar years. From insurrections and utopian settlements, to revolutionary military revolts, these narrations depict small vanguard groups that propose various plots that seek to radically reshape the social order. Even though poetry is often positioned as the paradigmatic form of vanguard literary expression, my research theorizes the understudied phenomenon of Hispanic avant-garde prose. In particular, I account for the variation among avant-garde novels of the period, by sustaining that there are gradations of vanguard narrative depending on different factors that range from the transparency or opacity of linguistic expression, to the organization of the narrative material. In this sense, some novels considered vanguardist, while approaching a certain radicality in terms of language and form, may incorporate elements of the realist-naturalist novelistic tradition. Likewise, I assert the importance of attending to the varied uses of meta-reflexive procedures in Hispanic vanguard prose. Given their implicit and explicit interaction with contemporary historical conditions and political and artistic discourses of the 1920s and 1930s, I contend that the essays and avant-garde novels analyzed offer a fertile ground to examine the nature of sovereignty, while also presenting, in some crucial instances, potential images of what a democracy worthy of this name could look like. / Spanish