TY - CHAP

T1 - A Very English Caciquismo?

T2 - Land, Badlands and Habitus in Fiona Mozley’s Elmet

AU - Thakkar, Amit

PY - 2024/12/2

Y1 - 2024/12/2

N2 - Of indigenous origins, the word ‘cacique’ refers most commonly in Spanish America to a local leader who would liaise and negotiate between the Spanish colonialists and his own community, an embodied manifestation of patriarchy which had a good deal of power to affect the fortunes of that community. The Spanish American cacique has evolved and survived various attempts to curb that power (Amit Thakkar 2012) to become an almost autonomous local bearer of power to this day. Forms of behaviour associated with the cacique can be grouped together under the term caciquismo or, more clumsily in English, ‘local bossism’. But can caciquismo be observed beyond Spanish America? Fiona Mozley’s Booker-shortlisted Elmet (2017), frequently referred to as a ‘Yorkshire western’, features an exploitative, landowning character, David Price. This character, along with his nemesis John Smythe, is analysed in this chapter within the framework of certain features of Spanish American caciquismo, exercising local economic power in much the way caciques of Spanish American novels do, especially in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955), which forms a comparative companion to the chapter. Depending on spatially contingent power relations, the term caciquismo might usefully be applied to non-Hispanic characters and to patterns which are hegemonic, sub-hegemonic (Christine Beasley 2008) and complicit, thus defying both spatial and conceptual categorisation. The chapter proposes that it is not consent but Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus ( 2010 [1984]) that underpins caciquismo and that an alternative habitus can counter it. That alternative is represented in Mozley’s novel by the character Smythe and his family as they reclaim land from Price, the cacique.

AB - Of indigenous origins, the word ‘cacique’ refers most commonly in Spanish America to a local leader who would liaise and negotiate between the Spanish colonialists and his own community, an embodied manifestation of patriarchy which had a good deal of power to affect the fortunes of that community. The Spanish American cacique has evolved and survived various attempts to curb that power (Amit Thakkar 2012) to become an almost autonomous local bearer of power to this day. Forms of behaviour associated with the cacique can be grouped together under the term caciquismo or, more clumsily in English, ‘local bossism’. But can caciquismo be observed beyond Spanish America? Fiona Mozley’s Booker-shortlisted Elmet (2017), frequently referred to as a ‘Yorkshire western’, features an exploitative, landowning character, David Price. This character, along with his nemesis John Smythe, is analysed in this chapter within the framework of certain features of Spanish American caciquismo, exercising local economic power in much the way caciques of Spanish American novels do, especially in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955), which forms a comparative companion to the chapter. Depending on spatially contingent power relations, the term caciquismo might usefully be applied to non-Hispanic characters and to patterns which are hegemonic, sub-hegemonic (Christine Beasley 2008) and complicit, thus defying both spatial and conceptual categorisation. The chapter proposes that it is not consent but Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus ( 2010 [1984]) that underpins caciquismo and that an alternative habitus can counter it. That alternative is represented in Mozley’s novel by the character Smythe and his family as they reclaim land from Price, the cacique.

KW - Caciquismo

KW - Yorkshire

KW - Habitus

KW - Masculinities

KW - Consent

KW - Comparative literature

KW - Land ownership

KW - Post-hegemony

KW - borders

KW - Border studies

KW - Planetarity

KW - Fiona Mozley

KW - Landlords

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9783031680496

SP - 149

EP - 170

BT - Border Masculinities

A2 - Thakkar, Amit

A2 - Baker, Brian

A2 - Harris, Chris

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

CY - Cham

ER -