The ideology of cultural identities : narrative technique and subjectivity in contemporary Mexican novels

Abstract

In literature, cultural identity must cede some of its distinctiveness to the contract between author and reader in order for the latter to perceive the kinds of difference the text does narrate. I show how the narrative structures of Oficio de tinieblas, Las posibilidades del odio and Hasta no verte, Jesus mio struggle with the difficulties inherent in portraying distinct categories of cultural identity within the rhetorical space of novels.

I analyze how the narrating agency in Oficio de tinieblas deals with the contradictions arising from the portrayal of an indigenous culture in a language and medium to which it has no access in the represented world of the text. I also discuss how oral versus written strategies of communication define and simultaneously blur categories of cultural identity.

I then explore how the non-traditional structure of Las posibilidades del odio and its complex narrative techniques reveal the paradoxes underlying any unitary vision of a nation. The novel also includes a strong vein of self-referentiality that exposes the dilemmas involved in writing about difference.

I concentrate my analysis of Hasta no verte, Jesus mio on the narrative setting established in the first chapter, particularly the issues of the agenda and position of the representer and its effect on the represented individual. I am also concerned with critical responses to the portrayal of the marginated individual in Hasta no verte, Jesus mio for what they say about how writing and oral differences are interpreted by the community of literary critics.

The truth or falseness of the images portrayed in these novels is not as much of an issue for me as are the ways textual representation of difference is limited in manners it does not acknowledge. The assumed reading contract involves the literary elite discussing among ourselves our imaginings about communities excluded from literacy. This approach produces knowledge not about the marginated communities, but about our (literary) strategies for representing difference.