Outline
for “The Labyrinths of Modernity: Mexico
-- Mid 20th Century “
Bruce-Novoa
Reading: Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, May 23-4
1. "Mexican Nation” represented in its “popular” identity:
II. Muralism as a major means of conveying Government's ideology
Case example: Rivera
1. Key national building were transformed to teach the lesson of the
successful revolution as the logical fulfillment of history.
2. Muralism exported the image of Revolutionary Mexico.
3. Rivera made commercial compromises with capitalist sponsors.
4. Muralism became an attraction for international audience: tourism, students,
5. Commercialization of murals
III. Mexico's Golden Age of Film: Same ideology.
IV. Mid-Century Reaction: desire to reread Mexico through a different lens.
V. Octavio Paz' The Labyrinth of Solitude, 1950. General Concerns
1. Misreadings as history or anthropology.
2. Paz was a poet/intellectual and a great synthesizer of contemporary thought.
3. His style is never direct.
a. The essay's surface features the same characteristics as Paz finds in Mexicans: indirect, guarded, secretive, revealing only at special moments, but then in images that can be mislead.
b. Prose vs. Poetry: Paz prefers the poetry as more dynamic, so he uses poetic imagery in the essay to create a net of interrelated images that convey the secret message.
c. Paz rejects "history" as a simple list of events with cause-effect narratives.
d. Paz favors psycho-mythological history: a rereading of the past through a culture's archetypal elements.
e. Paz believes all cultures participate in universal patterns of life, but each in its particular space/time and with its own attitudes.
f. History only makes sense when read through these culturally specific archetypal elements.
VI. The Labyrinth of Solitude, Chapter Analysis
like skyrockets: noisy explosions, but they disappear without producing or changing anything.
i.
Chingar,
to wound, kill, ruin, rip open, violate, fuck.
ii.
Gran Chingón: the Macho male—closed: Father.
iii.
Chingada:
female, opened by male: Mother.
iv.
In Mexico you either Chingar or you are Chingado.
i. Intellectual of liberal, modern scope
ii. Explores life's irresolvable problems for sheer joy.
iii. Seeks a total order of knowledge, yet acknowledges its impossibility.
VI. The Labyrinth of Solitude, Poetic Analysis
1. Paz begins early to circulate a set of key images that he will modulate through the text, weaving an intricate web of references beneath the prosaic mask of the prose information.
a. Mirror/water--Narcissus
b. Mask
c. Wound
d. Fireworks or Skyrocket
e. Shout.
f. Flower
2. These images function like the secret center of communion: the aperture to the natural world of harmony often seen as chaos from the perspective of order.
3. A sub-textual or palimpsestic line of revelation in which the underlying problem in Mexico—as everywhere in modern society—is the inability of man to communicate with his other in a full loving way.
4. Loves is to become one with the other in mutual giving and without fear or reservation
5. Models of redemptive communication are the Pachuco, women, Sor Juana, Cuauhtemoc, Christ.