Paper short abstract:

This lecture will review what allowed the formerly subaltern world of Catalonia's human towers (castells) to come to occupy a hegemonic center in expressive and folk culture: women's integration, gentrification, institutionalization, heritagization, the economic crisis, and political symbolization.

Paper long abstract:

The building of human towers (castells) is a centuries-old traditional folk sport where hundreds of men, women, and children gather in Catalan town squares to create breathtaking edifices through a feat of collective athleticism. The result is a great spectacle of effort and overcoming, tension and release. Castells has experienced a spectacular boom since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975: from just seven teams then, today more than a hundred teams build about fifteen thousand human towers a year at the festival squares of Catalonia. Furthermore, human towers have become a major symbol of the current pro-independence revival in Catalonia, as castells lend image, social base, and vocabulary to political aspirations. The story of castells is that of formerly marginal social elements shifting to the symbolic center. While folkloric practices often struggle to survive in urban modernity, castells thrive. What accounts for this redemption? This lecture will review what allowed the former subaltern to come to occupy a hegemonic center in Catalan expressive culture: women's integration, gentrification, institutionalization, heritagization, the economic crisis and other precarities, as well as the Catalanist political turn allowed castells to modernize, have relevance, and belong with the twenty-first century. This lecture will critically assess the benefits and risks of these developments.