Mexico's ruins : Juan Garcia Ponce and the writing of modernity / Raul Rodriguez-Hernandez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rodríguez-Hernández, Raúl.

Series:

SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture.

SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

García Ponce, Juan--Criticism and interpretation.

García Ponce, Juan.

Literature and society--Mexico.

Literature and society.

Politics and society--Mexico.

Politics and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (229 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

At face value, the concept of modernity seems to reference a stream of social and historical traffic headed down a utopian one-way street named "progress." Mexico's Ruins examines modernity in twentieth-century Mexican culture as a much more ambiguous concept, arguing that such a single-minded notion is inadequate to comprehend the complexity of modern Mexico's national projects and their reception by the nation's citizenry. Instead, through the trope of modernity as ruin, author Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández explores the dilemma presented by the etymology of "ruins": a simultaneous falling down and rising up, a confluence of opposing forces at work on the skyline of the metropolis since 1968. He focuses on artists and writers of the generación de medio siglo, like Juan García Ponce, and envisions both the tales of modernity and their storytellers in a new light. The arts, literature, and architecture of twentieth-century Mexico are all examined in this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary book.

Contents:

Traces of theory, tropes of modernity

The storyteller's ruins

Monuments and relics, I

Monuments and relics, II

De ánima, de corpore : the ruins of the bourgeois world

Modernity, contingency, compensation

A brief return to the ruin.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-210) and index.

ISBN:

9780791480823

0791480828

9781429471237

1429471239

OCLC:

137662026