That Old Bilbao Moon is a memoir, an ethnography of desire, an essay tracking a generation's consciousness, a manifesto for a new city and a new subject after the shipwreck. This Dantean narration presents "characters," including its author, whose lives do not conform to ideal cultural models. They are rather figures under the threat of disintegration who require self-transformation for their survival. Every conversation and event here narrated is ethnographically factual, yet the book is essentially about the fundamental fantasies and subjective conversions of a generation surrendered to "the passion for the real." This Bilbao generation of the sixties--branded inaugurally by the trauma of ETA, socialism, atheism, Aresti's Maldan behera (Downfall), the survival of Euskara, the art of Oteiza and Chillida, feminism--found in Frank Gerhy's "shipwreck" masterpiece its ultimate emblem and the promise of a new city. It is the architecture of labyrinth, a building of cuts and torsions, "the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe" (Muschamp), turned into the new face of "that old Bilbao moon" that Brecht sang as "the most beautiful in the world." Because even after the ruins and the defeat the mandate persisted: you must change your life, you must transform your city.
About the Author: Joseba Zulaika received his licentiate in philosophy from the University of Deusto, Spain, in 1975; his MA in social anthropology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, in 1977; and his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton in 1982. He has taught at the University of the Basque Country, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at the University of Nevada, Reno, since 1990, where he [has just retired] as a researcher with the Basque Studies Program. He has published the following books relevant to this course: Terranova: The Ethos and Luck of Deep-Sea Fishermen, ISER, Newfoundland, 1981; Basque Violence: Metaphor and Sacrament, University of Nevada Press, Reno, 1988 (Spanish translation, Violencia Vasca: Metáfora y Sacramento, Nerea, Madrid, 1990); Bertsolariaren Jokoa eta Jolasa, Baroja, Donostia, 1985; Tratado Estético-Ritual Vasco, Baroja, San Sebastián, 1987; Chivos y soldados: la mili como ritual de iniciación, Baroja, San Sebastián, 1989; Ehiztariaren erotica, Erein, Donostia, 1990 (Spanish translation, Caza, símbolo, eros, Nerea, Madrid, 1992); with William Douglass and Stanford Lyman, Migración, etnicidad y etnonacionalismo, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, 1995; with William Douglass, Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables and Faces of Terrorism, Routledge, New York, 1996; Del Cromañón al Carnaval: los vascos como museo antropológico, Erein, San Sebastián, 1996; Crónica de una seducción: el Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Nerea, Madrid, 1997. He has published numerous articles in professional journals as well.