MICRO AND MACRO REGIONALISM

Micro- and Macro-regionalism are ideological constructs like nationality which refer to areas both smaller and larger than a nation. Functioning co-dependently, the terms “micro-regionalism” and “macro-regionalism” fluidly shift meaning according to context and thereby serve as an effective means both of asserting the subversive force of any marginal position and of destabilizing the hegemonic power of any center. Once regional structures and the center are seen as sliding signifiers, then there is a movement toward the proliferation and empowerment of new structural units both at the micro and macro level.



Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain (1993)

p. 14, “Regionalism is an ideological construct like nationality which refers to areas both smaller and larger than a nation. Functioning co-dependently, the terms “micro-regionalism” and “macro-regionalism” fluidly shift meaning according to context and thereby serve as an effective means both of asserting the subversive force of any marginal position and of destabilizing the hegemonic power of any center.”

p. 388 -389, Regionalism and the Local/Global Dialectic
Regionalism and the Local/Global Dialectic, “Since regionality (like nationality) is an ideological construct, “regional film” and “regional television” are relativistic concepts. Like a linguistic shifter, “regional” means “marginal” in relation to some kind of geographic center or dominant cultural practice, and in the case of cinema, that frequently means Hollywood. As Ed Buscombe and others have observed, every national cinema is inevitably related to Hollywood, for it is this relation as an alternative to the dominant global practice that helps define its cultural distinctiveness. Such statements imply that in the context of the world market, all national cinemas are regional cinemas and that there is always a close connection between regionalism and nationalism....

Given this relativism, regionalism clearly may refer to geographic areas that are both smaller and larger than a nation. Thus, the terms `micro-regionalism’ and `macro-regionalism’ help us to understand the regional/national/global interface. Most important, because micro- and macro-regionalism function codependently, fluidly shifting meaning according to context, they thereby serve as an effective means both of asserting the subversive force of any marginal position and of destabilizing (or at least redefining) the hegemonic power of any center. Once regional structures and the `center’ come to be seen as sliding signifiers, then there is a movement toward the proliferation and empowerment of new structural units both at the micro and macro levels.”

p. 429, Reinscribing the Marginal as the Center. “These issues of micro-/macro-regionalism are not limited to international co-productions or to films made in so-called marginal regions like Cataluna, Galicia, or the Basque provinces.... These micro-/macro-regional dynamics were turned inside out by Almodóvar in the post-Franco era...

p. 433, “Through a strategy that was similar to that used by Catalan films like Vida en sombras, Almodóvar subverted the center by redefining it as the marginal. But this time, the center was located in Madrid rather than Barcelona, and, ironically, the inversion helped to demarginalize Spanish cinema in the world market....”

Film Quarterly (Spring 2003)
MK essay: “Uncanny Visions of History: Two Experimental Documentaries from Transnational Spain—Asaltar los cielos and Tren de sombras

p. 20, “At some point in the film we probably wonder why a Barcelona-born experimental filmmaker like Guerin should be interested in making a film about this obscure French subject, particularly if he is interested in reaching a European or global audience. Perhaps there is something wrong with this question, for why shouldn’t other regions or nations be able to make films about “foreign” subjects? Why should they be expected to make only national allegories about their own locales while Hollywood freely colonizes the rest of the world for subjects? This issue has been a sore point for both have historically been marginalized in world cinema. Perhaps the connection between Catalonia and the Thuit region of France makes more sense in the new macro-regional context of a transnational European cinema, where the nation is under erasure. At one point in the film we even see a map marked “Euro,” just as we literally see signs pointing to nearby cities such as Rouen. There is no mention of nations.”

MK essay, “El perro negro: Transnational Readings of Database Documentaries from Spain (2012)

p. 41, “As I argued in Blood Cinema, the national is always a contested construct, challenged both from within, by the local or micro-regional cultures whose distinctiveness it suppresses, and from without, by the larger macro-regional formations, such as European or Spanish-language media in the case of Spain. These micro- and macro-forces function as transnational entities, which, like rival national cultures, challenge this particular configuration of the national but, unlike those rivals, also undermines the very concept of the national itself.”