Abstract

This paper aims at delving further into historical and philosophical assumptions underlying Jose Gaos’s notion of “transtierro”. After going into exile and being settled in México in 1938, the Spanish philosopher coined the term “transtierro” so as to grasp the nature of Spanish diaspora in the new country. By bringing light into the extent to which the Mexican authorities support the arrival and settlement of the refuges after the Spanish Civil War, “transtierro” contributes to reframing the exile as a non-traumatic experience. Moreover, due to the bonds between Spain and Mexico, the experience “transtierro” is shaped by Gaos as the transition between one fatherland to the other. Against the backdrop of such reading, this paper goes further into the flaws and historical bias underlying the concept of “transtierro”. By echoing different readings and through the lens of trauma theory this paper provides both an interpretation and a critique of “transtierro”’s potentiality when it comes to underscore new collective identities in the exile and to overcome the traumatic legacies enforced migration use to bring about.