iMex XVII. Transborder Matters, año 9, n°17 | Romana Radlwimmer(ed.)

The discourse about borders, frontiers and all sorts of liminal phenomena, including transbordering or border-crossing, seems to be older than the current one on globalization and post-colonialism. The idea that globalization will wipe out all borders and limitations is problematic, and the strange, a result of cultural construction, will not disappear. Borders are never only limes, borders, fences, or walls, but at the same time they are also spaces between contact zones. Human space is...

The perspective on the Mexican-US Border is modified when looked at as frontera norte or as Southern Border. Along this enormous division line, the crossing of persons or merchandise between two distinct geopolitical entities becomes possible or is restricted. It is an emblematic zone to conceive the phenomenon of crossing. Contemporary literature, cinema and arts reflect a focus on displacements, a tendency that can be understood as a movement towards a transborder approach. Which phenomena...

This paper is a personal account of the intentions behind our reggaeton ME DUELE LA CARA DE SER TAN GÜERX (MY FACE SO GÜERO IT HURTS), a song that we wrote with the desire to challenge the internal and external güero – in our bodies and our group, and by/in our surrounding/s, respectively –, as well as to thwart the reggaeton genre itself. The paper combines collective narration and analysis of Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept nepantla,...

In this article I focus on a pedagogical notion inspired by Anzaldua’s ‘left hand maneuvers’ as critical thinking, which I call Tilting Pedagogies. Tilting Pedagogies are left hand maneuvers – connecting critical operations – that cross over to meet social urgencies as a way to incarnate theoretical thought inside the classroom. Tilting pedagogies represent those notions, actions and maneuvers that allow us to ‘incline’ – tilt – from academia to social urgencies, from Spanish to...

iMex XVIII. US-MEXICAN ENCOUNTERS IN CONTEMPORARY NORTH AMERICAN FILM / ENCUENTROS ESTADOUNIDENSES-MEXICANOS EN LA OBRA CINEMATOGRÁFICA NORTEAMERICANA CONTEMPORÁNEA, 2020/2, año 9, n° 18, 148 pp.| Guido Rings / Stephen Trinder(ed.)

An archaeology of media approach guides this analysis of the film Coco, a 3D animated fiction movie inspired by the Day of the Dead or Dia de los muertos in Mexico, and released by Pixar Animation Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, in 2017. In particular, I explore the tensions and contradictions within Pixar's most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand against Donald Trump's presentation of Mexicans as "rapists and...

In Guadalupe Nettel’s narratives, the representation of disability deconstructs various Latin American paradigms of 'normalcy', within a global context. Drawing primarily from her novel, Después del invierno (2014), this study focuses on the processes that confront the restrictive and oppressive notions of 'the feminine' and 'the masculine'. Following theoretical postulates that define disability as a social construction, as well as contemporary theories on gender and masculinities, this essay seeks to uncover the ways in which...

pp. 51-63 The debate around the concept of world literature, held with new intensity in the last twenty years, is part, within the framework of cultural studies, of the controversies that are closely associated with issues related to global networks in a polycentric world. In view of this, this article would first of all like to open the field of tension between the concepts of world literature and literature of the world, with the purpose...

This article aims to build the biographical narrative of Aslan, a Jew from Aleppo origin, who immigrated to Mexico at the beginning of the 20th Century. In this story, personal, family, community, local and national aspects converge, whose organizing axis is the economic itinerary in the context of the growth of the urban capitalism in Mexico City. It seeks to characterize the ethos of the life world of Aslán, that is, that cultural nucleus that...

pp. 91-106 This study is dedicated to the prologue Octavio Paz wrote for the second Mexican edition of Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), entitled “La mirada anterior.” It discusses a problematic of great relevance for Paz which, however, was thoroughly underestimated by the major part of scholarly work on the Mexican author. At issue is Paz’ interest in psychoactive phenomena in relationship to cultural creation and, especially, regarding...

pp. 166-178 Parting from an event at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe/ Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Des Plaines Illinois, near Chicago, this article shows how this sacred space acquired cross-cultural political significance for the struggle of Mexican migrants in the United States. It explores the connection between the religious symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the political activism of Mexican migrants. Its political significance is a historically rooted notion that...

pp. 80-97. Corruption is a problem that institutions all over the world experience to a greater or lesser degree. The issue is particularly severe in Latin America and, especially, in Mexico where it mixes with the violence exerted by drug cartels. Given its social costs, it is vital to acquire knowledge about the determinants of corruption and the behavioral factors underlying people´s corruptibility to combat it effectively. Complementing traditional approaches to the study corruption, such...

pp. 20-32. This article throws light on various shifts in the meaning of corruption. I argue that colonial Mexicans originally understood corruption by and large as an obstacle to finding justice. During the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the idea of corruption began to expand beyond the judiciary and included breaches in the administration for self-benefit. After independence, a third concept emerged, as the idea began including manipulations of the electoral process. In addition,...

pp. 107-116 This article explores the travel writing of Amado Nervo in El éxodo y las flores del camino, the 1902 volume that colects the sketches of a 1900 trip to the World Fair in Paris, both in prose and in verse. In my reading I privilege the «absential»: instead of the tourist magnets, the way that they let down Nervo, and the way he writes about it with peculiar sincerity. This sincere articulation of...

pp. 70-83 Illness and disability are recurring motifs in the novel Teoría de las catástrofes (2012) by the Mexican author Tryno Maldonado. The story, which develops during the Oaxaca protests in 2006, reflects the literary use of bodily insubordination as an allegory of collective political resistance. Taking into account the disability studies theory as well as the concept of biopolitics ­–that has allowed the State to exert violence against the members of the social body...

pp. 23-69 On the occasion of the bicentenary of the Mexican Declaration of Independence in 1821, this article aims to examine the extent to which political and social processes, the gradual emergence of a public space and the increasingly dynamic development of the press interacted in the run-up to this event. The study reveals that in the course of the formation of a public opinion in the sense of Habermas, many periodicals saw themselves as...

pp. 48-65. The consequences of corruption and wealth inequality are multiples and among of the most painful are the increase of violence. Mexico is a case in point, where these elements combined are causing thousands of deaths, millions of people living with less than a dollar per day, while 10% of Mexico’s richest concentrates 64.4% the country’s wealth. The main objective of this paper is to describe the relation between political corruption and income inequality...

pp. 53-67. Ensayo de un crimen is a film in which nothing is what it seems. Buñuel seduces us with his mysterious and disconcerting universe, and with his intimate look into the lives of his protagonists, who lose themselves in a surreal labyrinth of truncated plans. The following analysis will illustrate through structure and narrative the main constellations formed by the protagonist and the motley female characters and will clarify the relationship between victims and...

The article investigates the transcultural exchanges and the traces of a creole consciousness in the loa of the auto sacramental El Divino Narciso by Juana Inés de la Cruz. Our reading of this allegorical play takes the concept of belonging as a tool for the analysis of the multifaceted dynamics of cultural identification and differentiation that are deployed in this literary text from the Mexican colonial baroque of the 17th century. We will focus on...

Recently discovered documents dating back to the time of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz call for a reappraisal of the Novo-Hispanic poet’s biography. While perusing documents related to her family, her court life, and her conventual destiny, we perceive the contours of a “novel” portrait of her person in her own lifetime. We already have what we could call “data”, pointing to an integral and multifaceted biography: Sor Juana the thinker, the intellectual, the...

The readings of the work dedicated by Sor Juana to her patron, the Countess de Paredes, have followed different paths: between literature and life, rhetoric of courteous love and feminine friendship, poetic and politics, Sapphic, Neoplatonic or Petrarchan tradition. This work focuses on the exchange of representations between the poet and her patron and proposes that in this dialogue of figurations new feminine agencies arise in the XVII century, from an orbital place with respect...