Counter-Hegemonic Narratives. A Review of Ignacio Sánchez Prado’s <em>Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917-1959)</em> (Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2009.)

Authors

  • Manuel Gutiérrez Rice University

Keywords:

Literatura, Naciones intelectuales, Modernidad

Abstract

Over the past two decades, scholarship in Mexican studies has been engaged in an effort to dislodge the once persistent notion of a monolithic, homogenous “Mexican” nation. Consequently, scholars have also been engaged in a reevaluation of the cultural nationalism that accompanied the political project of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In these complementary critical endeavors, cultural critics have largely focused their attention on film, music, popular culture and other forms of symbolic representations and practices. Literature, however, viewed as traditional and, complicit with the development of an essentialist view of Mexican culture, has been notably absent from this necessary revision. Addressing this oversight, Ignacio Sánchez Prado’s Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917-1959) examines the emergence of the Mexican literary field and its institutionalization in Post-Revolutionary Mexico while offering a reassessment of the intellectual and political praxis of several canonical Mexican authors of the first half of the twentieth century. Proposing naciones intelectuales (intellectual nations) as an analytical term for understanding the critical projects of Jorge Cuesta, Alfonso Reyes, Luis Villoro and others, Sánchez Prado demonstrates how these intellectuals articulated alternative imaginaries to the hegemonic discourse propagated by the emergent Mexican state. Pointing to the political agency of Mexican literature, Sánchez Prado's study is a significant intervention in the field that will help reorient future studies of Mexican literary history.

Author Biography

Manuel Gutiérrez, Rice University

Manuel Gutiérrez es profesor asistente en la Universidad de Rice. Ha sido docente también en la Universidad de California en Los Angeles, donde completó su tesis doctoral en el 2010. Se especializa en la literatura, el arte y la cultura mexicanas del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX con un énfasis en las prácticas intelectuales, políticas y estéticas así como la historia.  Actualmente trabaja en un libro, Eyeing the world: Mexican Poets and the Visual Arts (1921-1969), que estudia la crítica poética mexicana y sus escritos sobre el arte, la política y la cultura a comienzos del siglo XX. Se dedica también ahora a una edición crítica sobre el cine de Arturo Ripstein.

Published

2012-01-31

How to Cite

Gutiérrez, M. (2012). Counter-Hegemonic Narratives. A Review of Ignacio Sánchez Prado’s <em>Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917-1959)</em> (Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2009.). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 9(2), 423–431. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/240

Issue

Section

Reviews: Culture, Politics and History in Mexico