A Brief Inquiry into Octavio Paz' Laberinto of Mexicanidad

1971 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
Jesús Chavarría
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Octavio Paz ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Mexican Art ◽  
Revolutionary Period

One Of The salient characteristics of 20th century Mexican art and intellectual history has been preoccupation with the problem of national identity, or, put in another fashion, with the problem of defining lo mexicano. Most commonly, concern for lo mexicano and mexicanidad has been associated with the Mexican Revolution. The generally accepted assumption is that inasmuch as the Mexican Revolution was a revolution without ideology, it was not until Mexicans began questioning the meaning of their revolution that they asked—what are we? who are we? Yet, the volume and importance of the intellectual and artistic production of the post-revolutionary period notwithstanding, it is certainly true that Mexicans were concerned with the problem of national identity even before 1910.

Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
National Character ◽  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mexican Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Sánchez and Sanchez have selected, edited, translated, and written an introduction to some of the most influential texts in 20th century Mexican philosophy. Together, these texts reveal and give shape to a unique and robust tradition that will certainly challenge and complicate traditional conceptions of philosophy. The texts collected here are organized chronologically and represent a period of Mexican thought and culture that emerges out of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and cultimates in la filosofía de lo mexicano (the philosophy of Mexicanness), which reached its peak in the 1950s. Though the selections respond to a variety of philosophical questions and themes and will be of interest to a wide range of readers, they represent a tendency to take seriously the question of Mexican national identity as a philosophical question—an issue that is complicated by Mexico’s indigenous and European ancestries, its history of colonialism, and its growing dependency on foreign money and culture. More than an attempt simply to describe the national character, however, the texts gathered here represent an optimistic period in Mexican philosophy that aimed to affirm Mexican philosophy as a valuable, if not urgent, contribution to universal thought and culture.

Campobello, Nellie (1900--1986) and Campobello, Gloria (1911--1968)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Reynoso
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Nellie Campobello ◽  
Musical Rhythms ◽  
Revolutionary Period

Sisters Nellie and Gloria Campobello migrated from Northern Mexico to Mexico City in 1923 where they became influential figures in the development of Mexican dance and the professionalization of dancers. During the 1930s, as dancers, choreographers, teachers, and dance administrators, the Campobello sisters joined the government’s efforts to develop a Mexican dance form that could reflect the country’s modern aspirations and revolutionary ideals, a nationalist project that started with the armed uprising of 1910. During this revolutionary period their work reflected the mestizo Modernism that Mexican muralists and musicians had been articulating since the early 1920s by combining elements from European modernist aesthetics and Mexico’s indigenous cultures. The Campobellos participated in government-sponsored cultural missions that comprised brigades of artists and teachers who, as part of Mexico’s post-revolutionary project, traveled to rural areas in order to educate indigenous populations, in subjects ranging from literacy to agricultural techniques. These nationalist efforts prompted artists and teachers like Nellie and Gloria to document traditional and indigenous costumes, crafts, musical rhythms and dances as symbols of an emerging national identity. The Campobello sisters and others like them used these materials in combination with ballet and other movement techniques in order to compose choreographic works that were representative of the nation. Gloria Campobello eventually became Mexico’s prima ballerina and the two sisters founded the Ballet of Mexico City in 1941. In addition to her work in dance, Nellie Campobello wrote several books and was the only female writer to publish narrations of the Mexican revolution based on her own childhood experiences.

Railroads and the Mexican Imagination during the Porfiriato and Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Press ◽  
Railway Workers

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the Mexican populace demonstrated a fascination with the nation’s railroads. Newspapers, literature, poetry, music, and art focused their attention on the symbolic power of the locomotive, revealing its capacity to reshape people’s social and cultural worlds. As the most potent symbol of progress and civilization, the arrival of the iron horse offered both powerholders and ordinary individuals the opportunity to imagine new possibilities for their nation and themselves, musings that could be highly optimistic or dreadfully distrustful. The locomotive emerged as a ubiquitous symbol throughout the restored republic (1867–1876), the Porfiriato (1876–1911), and the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) that inspired individuals to reflect on the meaning of an array of issues: modernization, cosmopolitanism, citizenship, sovereignty, and national identity. During the restored republic and Porfiriato, government officials and the press celebrated the railway as the dawning of new age of peace and prosperity, discourses that often sought to legitimize and justify sitting presidents and their policymaking. At the same time, popular and opposition groups used the symbolic power of the railway to question the decision-making of the elite that had resulted in extreme social inequality and foreign economic domination. These divisions were a portent of the conflicts that would spark the 1910 Revolution, a popular struggle where railroads and railway workers played principal protagonists. As such, the railroad emerged in a new context as a symbol to represent the heroism, violence, and disorder of those years.

Cinesonidos

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Avila
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Mexican Film ◽  
Commercial Medium ◽  
Film Genres

Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity During Mexico’s Época de Oro is the first book-length study concerning the function of music in the prominent genres structured by the Mexican film industry. Integrating primary source material with film music studies, sound studies, and Mexican film and cultural history, this project closely examines examples from five significant film genres that developed during the 1930s through 1950s. These genres include the prostitute melodrama, the fictional indigenista film (films on indigenous themes or topics), the cine de añoranza porfiriana (films of Porfirian nostalgia), the revolutionary melodrama, and the comedia ranchera (ranch comedy). The musics in these films helped create and accentuate the tropes and archetypes considered central to Mexican cultural nationalism. Distinct in narrative and structure, each genre exploits specific, at times contradictory, aspects of Mexicanidad—the cultural identity of the Mexican people—and, as such, employs different musics to concretize those constructions. Throughout this turbulent period, these tropes and archetypes mirrored changing perceptions of Mexicanidad manufactured by the state and popular and transnational culture. Several social and political agencies were heavily invested in creating a unified national identity to merge the previously fragmented populace owing to the Mexican Revolution (1910–ca.1920). The commercial medium of film became an important tool in acquainting a diverse urban audience with the nuances of national identity, and music played an essential and persuasive role in the process. In this heterogeneous environment, cinema and its music continuously reshaped the contested, fluctuating space of Mexican identity.

scholarly journals El otro lado de la modernidad boliviana. "Vuelve Sebastiana" y la reconfiguración de las coordenadas espacio temporales para pensar la Nación

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 46-66
Author(s):  
Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the film Vuelve Sebastiana (1953) by Jorge Ruiz, focusing on its ideological and aesthetic aspects. The analysis establishes connections between the idea of “nation” in the context of cultural transformation prompted by the economic and social policies of the National Revolution of 1952 and the way the Chipaya community is represented. The central argument is that "Vuelve Sebastiana" can be read not only in relation to the new national identity but as an expression of a new national imaginary regarding the indigenous communities of the Altiplano. The author proposes that "Vuelve Sebastiana" represents the nation through the temporal and spatial cartographies of a modern nation-building project, making visible some of its tensions and contradictions and allowing us to explore the imaginary that has redefined the relationship between the State and the indigenous communities of the Altiplano throughout the  second half of the 20th century.

scholarly journals IDEAS ABOUT NATIONAL IDENTITY IN RUSSIAN LITERARY REVIEW, HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DISCOURSES OF THE 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 680-685
Author(s):  
Viacheslav Krylov
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Individual Variations ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Further Development

This article analyses the evolution of literary reflections among the representatives of the 19th-early 20th-century trends and schools where ideas on national literature distinctness were formed. The study specifies both an invariant of the notions of national literature identity and individual variations that did not find further development in literary self-awareness. The essays of the 1870-80s suggest that there was formed an image of the original literature opposed to European literature. A new impetus to the problem of national identity in literature was attached to the era of the Silver Age; however, the analysis of the literary review, historical and literary discourses of the turn of the century leads to the conclusion that it was in this era that the ideology of literary centrism was further strengthened, and the exclusive status of Russian literature in culture received detailed reflection.

Mexican Muralism (c. 1920–1940)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Stigberg
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Mural Painting ◽  
National Discourse ◽  
Diego Rivera ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jose Clemente Orozco

The Mexican Muralist movement was a nationalistic movement that aimed at producing an official modern art form distinct from European traditions, thus embracing and clearly expressing a unique Mexican cultural and social identity. Shortly after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), expatriate Mexican artists were summoned to return to the country. They were charged with creating public murals on government buildings, which would visually communicate unifying ideals to a largely illiterate population. Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known collectively as Los Tres Grandes or The Great Three, were key figures in the movement. The architectural aspect of the large murals created during this period underscores the government’s and artists’ belief in art as a social and ideological tool, and reflects a desire to establish permanent expressions of a national identity. The works embraced and elevated mural painting in Mexico from a popular form to a form of high art. Further, the movement embodied social ideals manifested in the muralists’ work alongside carpenters, plasterers, and other laborers. The 1930s saw the solidification of a leftist national discourse, but by the 1940s, the major political developments in Mexico and Europe resulted in significant redefinition of this ideology, and Mexican Muralism became out-dated.

TIM EPKENHANS, Die iranische Moderne im Exil: Bibliographie der Zeitschrift Kave, Berlin 1916–1922, Islamwissenschaftliche Quellen und Texte aus deutschen Bibliotheken (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2000). Pp. 216.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-150
Author(s):  
Kamran Arjomand
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Intellectual history of modernism in Iran has proved to be a subject of lively academic interest. The role of Iranian exiles in late 19th and early 20th century, in particular, has drawn considerable scholarly attention. In recent years, the Iranian press in exile has also become a focus of academic scrutiny. In Germany, Anja Pistor-Hatam has studied the Iranian intellectual community in Istanbul around the newspaper Akhtar (Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsbörse und Diskussionsforum: Ahtar-e Estānbūl (1876–1896)—Anstöße zur frühen persischen Moderne [Münster, 1999]) and Keivandokht Ghahari's doctoral dissertation is concerned with ideas of nationalism and modernism among Iranian intellectuals in Berlin as reflected in the journals Kâveh, Iranshahr, and Ayandeh (Nationalismus und Modernismus in Iran in der Periode zwischen dem Zerfall der Qāğāren-Dynastie und der Machtfestigung Reżā Schah [Berlin, 2001]). In this context, the bibliography of Kâveh is thus a welcomed contribution.

“Fatally Tied Together”: The Intertwined History of Kurds and Armenians in the 20th Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-406
Author(s):  
David Leupold
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Binary Coding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
Kurdish Question ◽  
Kurdish Issue ◽  
Geographical Space

More than a century years ago Talât Pasha declared famously that in the Eastern Provinces “The Armenian question does not exist anymore”. Today, far from being resolved, the former binary coding (Armenian/Turkish) is even further complicated by a third element— the ongoing Kurdish question (doza Kurdistanê). While most research and journalistic works frame the Armenian issue and the Kurdish issue as two separate events that merely coincide(d) in the same geographical space, this work explores their interdependence and the historical trajectories of two peoples fatally “tied together” across a spatio-temporal scale. In my paper I identify two opposing lines of continuity through which both peoples are tied together: friendly and fatal ties. With regard to the first (friendly ties), I turn to the SSR Armenia and her role in fostering Kurdish culture and advancing Kurdish nationalism. Hereby, I argue that a marginalized community of Kurmanji-speakers—the Yezidis, previously othered as “devil-worshippers” (şeytanperest)— emerged as the vanguard in forging a novel, secularized Kurdish national identity. With regard to the latter (fatal ties), I link the irrevocable erasure of Ottoman Armenians to the emergence of an imagined “Northern Kurdistan” stretching over large parts of historic Armenia. This, finally, raises the question of Kurdish complicity in the Armenian Genocide—as state-mobilized regiments, tribal members and ordinary residents—in a geography where, as Recep Maraşlı put it, the descendants “are the children of both perpetrators and victims alike”.

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