Confesiones de un étnico recalcitrante :Respuesta a Juan Aranzadi

Abstract

The author replies to the accusations of ethnicity and postmodern relativism directed against him by Juan Aranzadi in his book El escudo de Arquíloco. The debate regarding Cavalli-Sforza’s genetic maps as applied to the Basques is a paradigmatic case: the author reproduces his skeptical views regarding such maps as expressed in one of his texts and opposes them to the patently fraudulent misrepresentation made by Aranzadi of such text to argue for hundred of pages about the author’s “recalcitrant etnicism.” The paper examines the parodic inversions of Aranzadi’s text which, in a confessional fashion and turning around 180 degrees from previous life experiences, opposes Christianity and anti-Christianity, democracy and anti-democracy, pro-Basques and anti-Basques world views, but always reproducing the same antagonistic scheme of solipsistic and excluding essences. The final irony is that the acerbic critic of Basque Millennialism and Golden Age ends up calling for an escape from modernity and for a return to the society of hunters and gatherers.