The Effects of the Nation

by Good, Carl; Waldron, John V.

• ISBN13: 9781566398664
• ISBN10: 1566398665
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-07-01
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

What is the effect of a "nation"? In this age of globalization, is it dead, dying, only dormant? The essays in this groundbreaking volume use the arts in Mexico to move beyond the national and the global to look at the activity of a community continually re-creating itself within and beyond its own borders.Mexico is a particularly apt focus, partly because of the vitality of its culture, partly because of its changing political identity, and partly because of the impact of borders and borderlessness on its national character. The ten essays collected here look at a wide range of aesthetic productions-especially literature and the visual arts-that give context to how art and society interact.Steering a careful course between the nostalgia of nationalism and the insensitivity of globalism, these essays examine modernism and postmodernism in the Mexican setting. Individually, they explore the incorporation of historical icons, of vanguardism, and of international influence. From Diego Rivera to Elena Garro, from the Tlateloco massacre to the Chiapas rebellion, from mass-market fiction to the film Aliens, the contributors view the many sides of Mexican life as relevant to the creation of a constantly shifting national culture. Taken together, the essays look both backward and forward at the evolving effect of the Mexican nation. Author note: Carl Good is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Emory University. >P>John V. Waldron is an independent scholar living in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Ungoverned Specificities	1	(19)
Carl Good
Mexican Art on Display	20	(17)
Olivier Debroise
Mathias Goeritz: Emotional Architecture and Creating a Mexican National Art	37	(16)
Fuan Bruce-Novoa
Corporeal Identities in Mexican Art: Modern and Postmodern Strategies	53	(20)
Karen Cordero Reiman
Elena Poniatowska's Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela: A Re-vision of Her Story	73	(25)
Susan C. Schaffer
``Un octubre manchado se defiene'': Memory and Testimony in the Poetry of David Huerta	98	(16)
Jacobo Sefami
Aesthetic Criteria and the Literary Market in Mexico: The Changing Shape of Quality, 1982-1994	114	(24)
Danny J. Anderson
Un hogar insolito: Elena Garro and Mexican Literary Culture	138	(22)
Rebecca E. Biron
Rene Derouin: Dialogues with Mexico	160	(18)
Montserrat Gali Boadella
Unhomely Feminine: Rosina Conde	178	(18)
Debra A. Castillo
The Postmodern Hybrid: Do Aliens Dream of Alien Sheep?	196	(17)
Rolando Romero
About the Contributors	213	(4)
Index	217