Ignasi Gozalo Salellas. The permanent exceptionality

Original language:Catalan

Original title: Permanent exceptionality.
Translation: the author himself.
Year of publication: 2023.
Valuation: recommendable, interesting.

I begin by highlighting the work of Anagrama in its collection Nuevos Cuadernos Anagrama to which, without even realizing it, I am (we are) giving a certain follow-up. First, for objective reasons: they deal with current topics, the firms usually have a certain reputation, to this we add the eminent practical aspect of being texts of a not very long format that constitute the wet dream of the somewhat rushed reviewer (subspecies in which I include myself without any shame), a question that even allows for a somewhat hasty rereading if, at the point of the review, we realize that the theme of the book is something recurring.

Permanent exceptionality It seems like an oxymoron, but as a title and as a concept that the book articulates, it is worryingly accurate. More so, when it comes to defining a habit established among the ruling class (which does not always openly coincide with the ruling class) in order to maintain the time – another concept to analyze, but another day – in a situation that justifies itself. Extremely current. When reviewing this book, there are two growing expectations at a global level: one, the reaction, or the magnitude of it, of Israel to Iran’s attacks, the other, the uncertainty of the result of the US elections, which by themselves could give meaning to an expanded revision of this text. So the concept, linked of course with the blows of the pandemic (which gave rise to another interesting text in this collection) and absolutely intertwined with very worrying realities that we are encountering in the countries called Westerners. Read, rise in migration, problems of coexistence at different levels, physical and psychological insecurity derived from the bias with which these problems are being treated in the media, on social networks, slow but inexorable advance of certain reactionary conceptions of life, camouflaged under the lamb’s mantle of irreverence and a certain romanticism implicit with rebellion. As if, in the absence of dates that fit, we suffered an inexplicable pre-millennium tension, a kind of pendulum movement between hedonism and transcendence, all tinged with a layer of intensity that, curiously, collides with the laziness and apathy of the that we accuse the new generations.

Gozalo Salellas, essayist, teacher and collaborator in the media, with life experience residing in the United States, also participant in some more tense situations localesprovides different perspectives for us to think about. Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro and some personalities (who believe they are divinities) from around here. The examples pile up and increase: the author warns us of that kind of collective unconscious, that whirlwind of absence of normality in which, for one pretext or another, citizens are abducted while we are asked to live a normal life in abnormal conditions, restriction of freedoms, special situations, suspension of daily life always for some reason, always for some reason.