- La literatura mexicana de transgresión sexual - Mario Muñoz
Taking as a base the anthology De amores marginales, of which I'm the author, an overview of the homosexual theme, focused on Mexican author's short stories is presented, from the precursors of the half-twentieth century to the most recent examples. This recapestablishes the diversity of the literary approaches of what some critics have called « Gay Literature », as a response to the repressive forces that society has exercised against sexual differences. The paper is an attempt to evidence how moral, familiar, religious and school intolerance led to self-censorship of the writers who evaded the treatment of certain individual problems, considering them harmful to the mainstream values of their time. In conclusion, the paper tries to demonstrate that gay themed literature emerges from the narrators belonging to the Generación del Medio Siglo (Half Century Generation) who broke the cultural prejudices and moral taboos of their time, producing an authentic literature of transgression that allowed the entering of modernity.
- « Machos » et « machistes » : (brève) histoire de stéréotypes mexicains - Didier Machillot
Durant la Révolution mexicaine, entre 1910 et 1920, surgit un stéréotype qui sera promis à un bel avenir : le « macho ». Révolutionnaire courageux dans un premier temps, ce dernier incarne certes des valeurs guerrières traditionnellement encensées en temps de guerre mais il s'inscrit aussi dans un contexte nationaliste et populiste qui, en réaction au discours élitiste et raciste de la dictature porfirienne, le fera se confondre avec le Métis et avec le Peuple. À tel point que cette figure classique du combattant, loin de disparaître en temps de paix, en viendra à symboliser, dès les années 1940, « le » Mexicain. Un « idéal » qui, loin de se « figer », évoluera au gré des changements de la société mexicaine... Mais ces transformations ne sont pas les seules à affecter le stéréotype du « macho ». Parallèlement à cette image globalement positive s'est construite au Mexique depuis les années 1930, une figure autrement plus négative : celle du « machiste ». Moins connue, cette histoire n'en est pas moins importante puisque c'est désormais celle qui s'impose dans le discours officiel lorsqu'il s'agit de lutter contre les inégalités entre les sexes.
During the early years of the Mexican Revolution, between 1910 and 1920, the « macho », a figure emerged during the post revolutionary nationalist regime, holds the promise of a bright future. Brave revolutionary at first, hero born from the mythical narrations of the Revolution, he indeed embodies the martial values traditionally acclaimed during wartime but since he is also part of the nationalist and populist context, in response to the elitist and racist discourse of Porfirio's dictatorship, he will be mistaken for the Mestizo and the Mass. So much so that the classic figure of the combatant, far from disappearing in time of peace, will become, as of the 1940's, the symbol of « the » Mexican. This « ideal », far from being rigid, will evolve according to the changes undergone by the Mexican society… However, these transformations are not the only or the most significant to affect the « macho » stereotype. Concurrently to this globally positive image, a far more negative image has emerged in Mexico since the 1930's, that of the « machista » [male chauvinist]. This story, less known, is nevertheless just as important since it stands out in the official discourse of the fight against gender inequality.
- Identidad y discurso contranormativos en El vampiro de la colonia Roma de Luis Zapata - Bertha Ladrón de Guevara
This article analyzes the discourse and identity of Adonis García, the main character in the seminal work of Luis Zapata, El vampiro de la colonia Roma (1979), as two main venues used by its author to express a strong criticism against the institutionalized practice of gender relations in Mexico at the time of the publication of this foundational novel. The identity of Adonis García has a three dimensional subversion in the sense that he is not only openly homosexual, but also a male whore that frankly accepts he enjoys this kind of work. In order to represent this subversion in the hegemonic gender system, Zapata breaks with the official discourse and deconstructs its language, setting in its place a contra hegemonic discourse. Thus, identity and discourse in this novel are interwoven questioning the marginality of a gay man as represented in the official language and subverting its mechanisms of power. In the end, Adonis García builds trough this denigrated status a libertarian and festive strategy of life.
- El miedo a lo femenino - Antoine Rodríguez
The discursive and iconographic figure of the effeminate homosexual, or rather socially stigmatized as lagartijos, jotos, maricones, invertidos, and some other tags gradually emerged in Mexico in the nineteenth century and spread widely in the period of Porfirio Diaz (1876 - 1910) and then in post-revolutionary times. Institutional discourse, carried by the official media, street flyers, artistic manifestos, criminological and medical literature or painting, by combining patriotic belief and fear of a dangerous socio-generic disorder, will “unleash” a stereotypical representation of homosexuals. Above is a result of a complex theoretical network initiated in Europe bourgeoisie and hygienist, the figure of homosexuals in Mexico becomes the receptacle grotesque of a decadence or degeneration against whom is intended reinforce generic assignments questioned by the emerging movements of female emancipation, overthrow the liberal government of PorfirioDiaz and, finally, impose the macho mexicano as a patriotic model post-revolutionary. Based on the representations of effeminate homosexual that exists in Europe, I'm interested to see how, in some way, they feed the Mexican configurations, which in turn produce specific national prototypes.
- La naturaleza de las articulaciones regionales en México a través del tiempo - Carlos Riojas
The essay presents some regional relationships over time, that have defined the characteristics of sub-national spaces, it highlights the exogenous and endogenous articulations that have shaped the lives of different territories in Mexico. The discussion evolves around the use and management of natural resources like water and forests, but also take into account other variables related to institutions, history, economics, politics and culture. Through analysis of these linkages is possible to understand the nature of the diversity of regional scenarios in Mexico, and even, this variety has increased despite the continued efforts of the respective governments to homogenizing the spaces. This trend is consistent with other experiences Latin America, due to a complex confluence of a number of common variables that interact at the regional level. The recognition of complexity in the regional integration is an important starting point for understanding the dynamics of economic growth in Latin America, the latter has sometimes been limited by geographical and institutional determinism, but this does not mean they are insurmountable.
- Una revisión sobre el concepto de identidad del mexicano - José Martín Hurtado Galves
The present text is a reflection on the idea of identity in Mexico. Envelope is reflected which are these on this subject four Mexican philosophers: Antonio Caso, Jose Vasconcelos, Samuel Ramos and Leopoldo Zea. The objective is to review and to reframe their ideas in order to compare them with the different realities that today are lived in our country. The ideas, after all, do not finish going away, in any case, they return to make us see and speak to us from which we believed already surpassed.
- Los conflictos de la representación del otro en dos novelas de la revolución mexicana - Betina Keizman
The revolution novel constitute, within the Mexican literature corpus, one special foundational narrative gender, what Bhabba called Nation's foundational or narrative fictions. Heterogeneous in spite of being included in one same generic category, revolution novels have been essentials in stereotypes elaboration. Especially, in those that represents the armed confrontations period can be read the popular other's figure construction, in this moment embodied in the revolutionary fighter's body. Novels that put in scene the hard relationship between this object and the writers who address it, from an non saveable discrepancy situation that reach its highest peak in treatment of topics that are essentials for this matter : the problem of violence ethic justification, origins of the fight, personages morality besieged between heroic dimension that is expected from them and the observation – classist – of their own limits. Moreover, we would like to analyze two pieces, Los de abajo by Azuela and Cartucho, by Nellie Campobello, revolution's eccentric novel. Our hypothesis is that what have been read in both texts as untidiness, composition limitation, fruit of too Little revision or told events biographical determination can be understood with a different code : as an expression and symptom of the conflict in the other's representation and as a search, from the author voice, of positioning and narrative strategies that investigate and witness the representation difficulties.
- Desmitificar el mito de la Revolución mexicana - Marie-José Hanaï
From the Mexican post-revolution, several speeches have undertaken a mythification of the Revolution, claiming to unify the nation by means of images, heroes and formulae, or trying to establish the features of the Mexican identity. In the second half of the 20th century, historians, anthropologists and fiction writers choose the route of the exploration and discussion of the myth to re-evaluate its importance and meaning in the Mexican identity and the national culture. The representation of the Revolution in the novel takes part of this review and interrogation of the myth. We propose to consider two novels published in the 80s, Gringo viejo, of Carlos Fuentes, and La familia vino del norte, of Silvia Molina, to compare the strategies of discussion of the revolutionary myth, between re-mythification and humanization.
- Manuel Alvarez Bravo, photographe mexicain de l'abstraction figurative - Laurent Aubague
Parmi les multiples facettes de la longue œuvre de Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902-2002), celle qui correspond à la décennie des années 1925-1935 peut susciter un intérêt particulier dans la mesure où elle semble répondre à une orientation esthétique originale, apparemment contradictoire, pouvant être qualifiée d'abstraction figurative.
When considering the multi-faceted work Manuel Alvarez Bravo produced throughout his lifetime (1902-2002), the decade 1925-35 offers particular interest insofar as it appears to have taken on board an original aesthetic trend which, although it may at first sight seem to be a contradiction in terms, might be called figurative abstraction.
- Transgresión y rebeldía - An Van Hecke
The aim of this paper is to analyze what happens with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe when it becomes a transnational figure, when it suffers deterritorialization as happens in Chicano culture in the United States. The article consists of two parts : on the one hand, the art of painting, on the other hand, literature. In both fields, there will be a study of the works from the seventies of the 20th century to the present. In the artistic field I discuss, among others, works by Ester Hernández, Yolanda López and Alma López. For literature a selection has been made of text fragments of Tomás Rivera, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Cherríe Moraga, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Alejandro Morales. In their search or construction of Chicano identity, and their desire to be distinguished from the Other, i.e. the Anglo-American, Chicano authors question and reinterpret the image of the Virgin.
- Un siècle de détournements - Isabelle Boof-Vermesse
Ecrit trois ans après son pamphlet A Century of Dishonor (1881), Ramona devait être l'équivalent pour la question indienne de Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Mais la stratégie de Jackson n'a pas fonctionné comme prévu et la réception de ce roman sentimental fut et reste basée sur une « mélecture » (« misreading ») : attirés par le monde merveilleux du rancho, lui-même pâle reflet du glorieux passé des missions, les lecteurs yankees n'ont jamais été plus loin que cette fascination pour la culture espagnole-mexicaine, catholique, rurale et aristocratique suscitée par le texte, qui emprunte aux conventions de la romance et du carnet de voyage. Si Ramona avait initialement pour projet de dénoncer le comportement des envahisseurs nord-américains pour inspirer de la compassion envers leurs victimes et exiger un changement de politique, la position commune des Anglos et des Mexicains vis-à-vis des Indiens a encouragé une identification fonctionnant à l'encontre de celle voulue par l'auteur (qui n'est pas forcément celle du texte). Les éléments gothiques à la fois thématiques (la belle captive, le couvent, l'enlèvement…), narratifs (le pittoresque et le « word-painting ») et idéologiques sont bel et bien activés dans Ramona, mais en quelque sorte à l'envers. De plus, la formule est compliquée par la triangulation : entre bourreau anglo et victime indienne s'interpose la figure intermédiaire du noble mexicain. La présente étude se concentre sur cette figure et son traitement métonymique, l'Arcadie du rancho, pour montrer comment la mélecture de Ramona déborde dans la culture californienne et devient de la récupération. Ainsi dès le 19ème siècle l'exploitation du roman contribue à la construction de l'identité régionale en inventant de toutes pièces des manifestations de type « culte » (tourisme culturel et pèlerinage sur les lieux du roman, Ramona Pageants …) qui ont encore cours aujourd'hui.
Written three years after her pamphlet A Century of Dishonor (1881), Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson was to do for Native Americans what Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) had done for the slaves. But Jackson's strategy did not quite work out as planned and the reception of her sentimental novel was and still remains informed by what can only be described as fundamental misreading. Yankee readers never quite managed to shake off the enchantment that came with the evocation of the wonderful world of ranchos, and beyond it the glorious times of Spanish missions. Deliberately borrowing from the codes of romance on the one hand and travel writing on the other, the text has encouraged this fascination for the agrarian, aristocratic, Catholic Spanish-Mexican culture. While Ramona, in order to prompt reform, had originally meant to denounce anglo invaders by exposing them as much cruel than their Mexican counterparts in their treatment of Native Americans, by yoking them together in their common position as tormenters it only succeeded in promoting a devious form of identification, working at cross purposes with the original project (of the author, if not of the text itself). Thus a number of gothic motifs that are at the same time thematic (the female captive, the convent, the flight), narrative (word-painting, the picturesque) and ideological are duly activated in Ramona, but in a somewhat inverted form. In addition, the gothic formula is complexified by the introduction of a third term between the American villain and the Indian victim: the middle figure of the Mexican. This article will approach this figure through its metonymic treatment, the Arcadian rancho, in order to show how the misreading of Ramona has been recuperated to feed Californian culture. Ever since the 19th century, the novel has contributed to the construction of regional identity, as it was used to create from scratch various cult-like events like pilgrimages to the original settings of the novel or Ramona Pageants, more generally to build a whole cultural tourism industry.
- « Alta, desnuda, única. Poesía » - Mathieu Duplay
Dans El Niño (2000) et A Flowering Tree (2006), deux de ses opéras les plus récents, le compositeur américain John Adams (né en 1947) a choisi de travailler sur des livrets bilingues où l'espagnol occupe une place significative aux côtés de l'anglais ; c'est tout particulièrement le cas de El Niño où des textes d'auteurs hispano‑américains sont cités dans la langue d'origine. Chez Adams, le bilinguisme semble lié à une interrogation sur les usages politiques de la représentation. Ce lecteur d'Edward Said est sensible à la manière dont le discours du pouvoir s'arroge le droit exclusif de donner des peuples dominés une image présentée comme véridique et dont le prétendu savoir qui en résulte est instrumentalisé à des fins autoritaires. Le bilinguisme de El Niño contribue à interroger ce que l'on pourrait appeler en termes paradoxaux un orientalisme latino, le savoir de l'Amérique hispanophone que construit la représentation artistique et ses usages à des fins de domination ; en effet, il attire l'attention sur l'hétérogénéité des ressources dont usent le compositeur et son librettiste Peter Sellars, autrement dit sur ce qui les rend impropres à la constitution d'un discours hégémonique. Parallèlement, Adams et Sellars proposent une autre conception de la vérité, fondée non plus sur la quête d'une synthèse généralisante ni, a fortiori, sur la recherche d'une idéalité abstraite susceptible de s'imposer indépendamment du contexte, mais au contraire sur la prise en compte des déterminations particulières qui confèrent aux êtres et aux situations historiques leur pleine valeur de singularité. Sur ce point, ils rencontrent les préoccupations de l'auteur mexicain Rosario Castellanos, dont plusieurs poèmes sont repris intégralement dans le livret de El Niño. Lectrice de Simone Weil, Castellanos illustre par son écriture une conception à la fois éthique, esthétique et épistémologique de l'enracinement, défini comme l'attention amoureuse portée à ce qui est, à la réalité concrète qui est indistinctement beauté, puissance et vérité. De même, Adams et Sellars opposent à la fiction d'un savoir universel une pratique de l'écart, de l'intervalle et de la transition, celle‑là même qui, chez John Adams, a nom musique, et que Simone Weil appelle la vie.
- Chronique et symbole au Mexique en 1968 - Françoise Léziart
Cette communication a pour objet d'analyser la transformation d'un événement tragique qui a eu lieu en 1968 à Mexico. Il s'agit du massacre de Tlatelolco qui a fait plus de 300 morts sur la place du même nom lors de manifestations estudiantines organisées pour réclamer plus de démocratie dans le pays. Entre information et revendication, douleur et exaltation, écriture et oralité, les chroniques des deux écrivains et journalistes : Elena Poniatowska (La Noche de Tlatelolco, 1971) et Carlos Monsiváis (Días de guardar, 1970) ont contribué à la création de nouveaux symboles.
The subject of this paper is an analysis of the changes following the tragedy that took place in Mexico 1968. The massacre of some 300 students happened in Tlatelolco during a peaceful protest rally demanding democratic government reform. The writers and journalists Elena Poniatowska (‘Massacre in Mexico' 1971) and Carlos Monsiváis (‘Days to Remember' 1970) collated interviews for the claims and counterclaims, plus written and oral statements of what happened in that time of despair and intense emotion. Their work is a major influence in the creation of a modern symbolic moment in Mexican history.
- El narco como telón de fondo : Fiesta en la madriguera - Teresa García Díaz
Teresa Garcia Diaz explores some of the connections between reality and literature from the genre “narconovela”, analyzing Fiesta en la madriguera, a novel by Juan Pablo Villalobos. The author observes how the stereotypes relating to drug-traffickers become real in both the literary fiction as well as the political realty; this is shown when comparing the profile of some Mexican capos with the characteristics of stereotypes in the “narconovelas.” Besides recurring in various texts within this genre, for example La Virgen de los icarios by Fernando Vallejo, El ruido de las cosas al caer by Juan Gabriel Vázquez, “Ese modo que colma” by Daniel Sada, Tijuana: crimen y olvido by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, and Los trabajos del reino by Yuri Herrera, this provides the reader with a complete overview about the development and evolution of the “narconovelas,” as well as develops several reflections about the relevance, the aesthetic quality, the genre's pinnacle and the reception of its narrative mode.
