ABSTRACT
Gen X cultural production is often described as nihilistic. Yet, at least in the Spanish context, what these writers accentuate is not the absence of meaning, but awareness of the profusion of competing versions of value and identity filtered through technology. The reach and interactivity of media and technology offer contact with many more people, but each of these contacts appears both more immediate and more transitory. This disparity reveals a kind of absence—the awareness that connectivity does not necessarily lead to authentic connection, and in fact can confuse or supplant it. Despite access to expansive communication networks, individuals are simultaneously more distant from firm knowledge of the origin, authorship, and intention of information and identities on which they base their relationships. Spain's Gen X authors present conflicting views of this ambiguity, sometimes seeing mobility and easy attachment/detachment as opportunities for redefinition and self-creation, and other times as a source of anxiety.
