In the Name of the Basque Mother: The Repackaging of the 1939 Basque Exile in Javier de Isusi's Asylum (2015)

ABSTRACT:In this article, I examine the rhetoric of gender equity and sexual diversity that guides the repackaging of the 1939 Basque exile in Javier de Isusi's graphic novel Asylum (2015). Seeking to promote solidarity with asylum seekers, the graphic novel weaves together stories of past and present displacement via a teleological approach to the history of the Basque feminism. I draw on Jasbir Puar's theorization of homonationalism to elucidate how Asylum relies on the mutability of nationalistic tropes to refashion the 1939 Basque exile as part of a celebratory women's and gay rights tale of the nation. I argue that Isusi's book bridges past and present by recasting in terms of gender equity and sexual identity what I call the trope of liberatory Basque blood: a lineage of Basque warriors for universal freedom. Through this nationalistic trope, Asylum refashions, and simultaneously conceals, the neocolonial imaginary that shaped the relationship between the Basque Country and Latin America. In doing so, the graphic novel also overlooks heterodox voices within the Basque nationalist exile of 1939 that provided alternatives to the trope of liberatory Basque blood.