Margarita Nelken y su red transnacional judaico-feminista

Margarita Nelken and her Jewish-feminist transnational network. Margarita Nelken was a politician and intellectual of the Second Spanish Republic. She was also a lead player and promoter of social change in the period between the two Spanish dictatorships. In her texts Nelken focused on offering a ‘modern’ approach to the feminine condition. While her views on the prior topics are well known, less so is her attitude towards her Jewish heritage and identity, of which she discussed in different texts. My purpose is to study Nelken´s vision on Hebrew identity by analyzing two texts, Las escritoras españolas (Barcelona, 1930) and Los judíos en la cultura hispánica (México D.F., [1949]), which both differ in their historical context (Second Spanish Republic and the author’s period in exile) and in their cultural scope (Peninsular and Hispanic cultures), yet remain bounded by the Jewish element. I intend to reflect on the “transnational network” embodied by Jewish identity and its diasporic essence, through the lens of a woman, Margarita Nelken. Utilizing a comparatist perspective my intention is to determine Nelken’s contribution to building a somewhat underground and newly born network between two “minority” cultures, which she set in open dialogue, that is of being a woman and Jewish, in two different moments for the author, during the “Silver Age” and later in exile.