Maarten van Delden

El ensayo de identidad nacional mexicano en la época posnacional: Mexicanidad y posmexicanidad en Jorge Castañeda y Heriberto Yépez

In spite of the critiques aimed in recent decades at the tradition of Mexican writings on national identity, there has been a resurgence in the last few years of books on the topic of the Mexican character. This essay examines works by Jorge Castaneda and Heriberto Yepez that are a part of this new trend. I argue, however, that these authors do not offer a simple return to an earlier tradition of writings of national identity. Although Castaneda and Yepez reject the view that identities are mere inventions, arguing that the Mexican national character has a real existence, they also maintain that this national character is an obstacle to the nation’s progress and therefore needs to be overcome, rather than celebrated. In this way, their works combine a national with a post-national perspective.

Heterogeneity of Being: On Octavio Paz's Poetics of Similitude by Marco Luis Dorfsman (review)

that objects help form the individual, a process that can be seen operating in the characters depicted by Garcilaso’s poetry as well as in the poet himself. A theme that runs throughout Barnard’s study is the interaction between voice and writing, and how often the material objects depicted in Garcilaso’s text engage with this relationship. Barnard could have investigated this theme more thoroughly in the first chapter by discussing the intertextual relationships between the third Eclogue and Latin poets who also engaged with the interaction between voice and writing, and in this regard her bibliography could be more complete. Indeed, Barnard is at her best when she combines philological probing of Garcilaso’s text and its relation to his models with an attention to the material culture that surrounded him in Charles V’s court, in Naples, and in Italy generally, and she does this well in other chapters. Overall, the result is a book that, in its focus on material objects and how they informed the poetry of the prı́ncipe de los poetas castellanos, is a valuable and important study, informative as well as a pleasure to read.

The Holocaust in Mexican Literature

Even though none of the recent reference works on Holocaust literature mentions the Mexican output on this topic, there exists a substantial tradition of literary works in Mexico that address the Holocaust. This essay offers a survey of this tradition, with a focus on how the authors of these works relate the Holocaust to the Mexican context from which they are writing. I argue that most of the Mexican authors I study treat the Holocaust as part of a shared history, rather than a history towards which they adopt an outsider’s perspective.

Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity

This study of the work of the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes argues that there is a fundamental paradox at the heart of Fuentess vision of Mexico and in his role as novelist and critic in putting forth that vision. This paradox hinges on the tension between national identity and modernity. A significant internal conflict, van Delden contends, emerges in Fuentess work from his attempt to stake out two different positions for himself, as experimental novelist and as politicallly engaged and responsible intellectual. Drawing on his fiction, literary essays and political journalism, the book places these tensions in Fuentess work in relation to the larger debates about modernity and postmodernity in Latin America. It concludes that Fuentes is fundamentally a modernist writer, in spite of the fact that he occasionally gravitates toward the postmodernist position in literature and politics.

Gifts and Games in Frank Martinus Arion's Dubbelspel

Frank Martinus Arions Dubbelspel , a brilliant exploration of Curacaoan society in the wake of the riots of May 30, 1 9692 opens with three epigraphs, two of which help to establish the decidedly ironic tone of the novel. The first epigraph is from an essay by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell speaks of how Tsar Nicholas Ms indifference to politics was matched only by his passion for dominoes. Apparently, on the very eve of the 1917 Revolution the Tsar wrote a letter to his wife mentioning how much he was looking forward to taking up dominoes again in his spare time. This can be read either as a testimony to the Tsars frivolity and short-sightedness, or as a token of the seductive power of the game of dominoes. In the novels third epigraph, Arion offers another example of how a passion for dominoes can disrupt ones usual sense of whats important and whats not. Arion cites a report claiming that the Dutch managed in 1625 to take the fortress of El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico only because the forts Spanish defenders were busy playing dominoes. Irkthis case, the game constitutes a distraction from events in the real world, but it also helps shape the outcome of these