Lecture 4 Outline

The Labyrinths of Modernity: #2

Bruce-Novoa

Reading: Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude

May 25-6

I. Recall what was said about the Poetic Substrata

1. Key words that circulate and modulate.

2. Wound, Skyrocket, Shout, Flowers.

3. The images blend into a union impossible in prose.

4. However, Paz leaves that all behind in the silence of Sor Juana and enters into the realm of “History” pp. 117-166. His subtext starts to return with “mask… to gash open… secret voices” p.169.

II. As the text reaches the closing chapters, the binary contrast of Mexico vs. Outside world collapses.

1. "Now the center or nucleus of world society has disintegrated and everyone—including the European and the North American—is a peripheral being. We are living on the margin because there is no longer any center.“ p. 170

2. "Mexicanism can only be a part of a larger meditation on a much vaster theme: the historical alienation of dependent peoples and of mankind in general." p. 171

3. "Our situation is now no different from that of other countries. Our cultural crisis, for perhaps the first time in history, is the same as the crisis of our species." pp.171-2

4. "Our own labyrinth is the labyrinth of all mankind." p. 173

III. Ch. 8 The Present Day 175-94

1. Starts by affirming the transformation brought by the Revolution

2. But it failed to create a true community.

a. Without the materials necessary to succeed, it had to compromise.

b. Old patterns returned.

c. Social Order imposed repressive forms.

IV. Paz's style changed as he discussed political and economic programs

1. Prosaic

2. Information over form

3. Propaganda tone

V. Paz seems to fall into the temptation to play the rhetorical game of power politics.

1. He has warned us about the seduction of using power

2. He has told us about how Sor Juana had entered the game and been repressed.

VI. Ch. 9 The Dialectic of Solitude: A Return to Poetry

1. Paz returns fully to his project: echoes of the first chapter.

"All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone. And they are.” p. 195

2. Returns to LOVE

"Creation and destruction become one in the act of love, and during a fraction of a second man has a glimpse of a more perfect state of being." p.197

3. Yet, Society makes love impossible

a. Channels love into marriage

b. Represses erotic instincts

c. To defend love becomes a crime

d. To defend love becomes a revolutionary act

VII. Paz calls for a Revolution: Love

1. Myth

2. Poetry

VIII. The University City, 1950

1. The project that attracted more attention than Paz's Labyrinth

a. New idea: a U.S.-style campus

b. Fulfillment of the Education program of the Revolution

c. Opened the southern sector of the city to development.

IX. Post-Revolution Architecture

a. Pre-Columbian models

b. International modernist models, esp. Corbusier

c. Integration of mural projects into modernist buildings

X. University City: Ideal of a City for Education

a. Elements of the plan.

b. Materials

c. Construction process

d. Ideal of modern architecture

XI. Local and global

a. International design

b. Pre-Columbian base

XII. Muralism: Imposition of MEXICAN SCHOOL OF ART

a. The Three Greats

b. Siqueiros: Clichés of Revolutionary Discourse

c. Rivera's stadium: saved by the budget crisis

XIII. Labyrinth and the University City: Shared elements

a. Purpose: new Mexican being.

b. Structure: binary à tripartite

c. Dialectic: modernity/origin

: prose vs. poetic hidden world

d. Goal: re-establish union

e. Obstacle: prosaic national discourse

XIV. International modernism without the political pastische: Latin American Tower

XV. A Third alternative: Emotional Architecture

1. Mathias Goeritz
2. The Echo as national liberation or a return to the WOUND at the origin of the Mexican nation.