Landscape Ecology in Mexico: Evolution, Research, Education and Future (Selected Theoretical and Meta-Scientific Aspects)

Context:The impulse to write this contribution was the effort of co-authors to bring the European landscape ecologist closer to the development, research & didactic approaches and possible future development of landscape ecology in Mexico from the theoretical, metascientific and applied point of view. Purpose: The purpose of the metascientific approach, in this case meta-landscape ecological approach, is to increase the degree of generalization of existing empirical-methodological, theoretical-application and didactic knowledge and results of landscape-ecological research, so that generally valid landscapeecological regularities and principles can be determined The aim was to acquire new generalizing and holistic qualities and perspectives in the field of landscape ecology in Mexico at this level. Methods: The two-step methodical procedure was elaborated, using metascientifically oriented landscape ecological and ecological Mexican literature, complemented by our studies and personal experience. Results: In this way, new knowledge, representing the added value and meaning of landscape ecologicalevolution, research, education and future development in Mexico was gained. It will serve also to Mexican landscap ecologists. Conclusiones: Mexican landscape ecology, lying at the intersection of European and American landscape ecology, can be described as integrative, idiographic-nomothetic at the spatial level of the landscape in the contact zone of European and American research approaches and principles.

El Corno Emplumado y la vanguardia en el umbral de la nueva era.

This article analyzes the case of the Mexican magazine El Corno Emplumado and its role as an avant-garde publication based on Renato Poggioli's idea of avant-garde movement and the notions of epoch threshold and aesthetics of threshold formulated by Hans Robert Jauss and Luciana del Gizzo, respectively. The intention is to examine the way in which the magazine edited by Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragón updates the utopian impulse of the avant-gardes based on their vision that social change at the beginning of the 60s of the 20th century would come thanks to renewal spirituality that only art and poetry could provide. Additionally, it investigates the way in which the magazine reconfigures the avantgarde myth of the new beginning from its postulate of the advent of a new era, the era of the man of air. All this in order to discuss the possibility of thinking about the presence of an avant-garde continuity in Mexican literature throughout the 20th century.

Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Clemencia y la ecocrítica.

Ignacio Manuel Altamirano’s narrative has been one of the testimonies more remarkable of Mexican literature of the XIX century. Its study suggests many ways of approach to one of the more important historic and cultural time living in Mexico. The actual work analyses from the perspective of the ecocritic theory the fundamental importance of space and nature in literature. Clemencia is a novel that inscribes in the romanticism, nature develop in an open space with notables descriptions about mountains, plants, and gardens. The Ecocritics based its study in a natural perspective and about how it comes an active part in the narration; it gives a testimony of a concrete époque and reveals the relation between human / no-human. It is in Clemencia where this characteristic works in a space, where the natural world has and gives transcendental importance, a poetic scenery, nature, conforms for the nineteenth landscape in Guadalajara city.

The Nonreader Citizen and the Nation in Rosa Beltrán’s Efectos secundarios (2011)

Increasing literacy rates and engagement with reading as a cultural practice in Mexico has been the focus of many postrevolutionary programs, yet studies show that few Mexicans choose to read on a regular, voluntary basis. While the image of Mexicans as nonreaders is a common theme in contemporary Mexican literature and popular culture, few studies exist on the topic. This article analyzes representations of the nonreader in Rosa Beltrán’s novel Efectos secundarios (2011) and the relationship of these portrayals to citizenship, cultural policy and management, the cultural industry, and the effects of neoliberalism in twenty-first-century Mexico. While novels such as El último lector (Toscana 2004; The last reader) and advertising, such as that of the Gandhi bookstore chain, depict reading apathy as a personal failure on the part of Mexican citizens and a lack of volition to exercise what might be seen as a civic responsibility, Beltrán’s novel shows Mexican nonreaders as victims of a failed state marked by corruption, impunity, insecurity, and violence, which impede reading as a cultural practice. Because a reading public may be seen as vital for democracy, Beltrán’s novel invites critical engagement with key debates on reading and education policy, the politics of the Mexican publishing industry, and the effects of corruption and violence on the distribution of cultural goods.

Los Raros. La escritura excluida en México

More than a decade ago, the Literary Studies Program of El Colegio de San Luis and the Institute of Linguistic and Literary Research of the Universidad Veracruzana joined forces to undertake the study, rescue and dissemination of writers, works, and literary phenomena that could be called "rare", due to the lack of knowledge or neglect that both academia and literary critics have had towards them. The 14 articles in this book are the result of a genuine interest in settling this debt with the literary tradition in Mexico. In these pages, a group of specialists from prestigious higher education institutions, approach from a philological, literary criticism, historiography, cultural studies or intellectual biography perspective, to the analysis of singular texts, either for their style, or for the peculiar treatment of their themes, or simply because in their time they were ahead of generic determinations, aesthetic trends or group editorial processes, covering a broad period from the late eighteenth century to the twilight of the twentieth. As a whole, the gaze of these 14 study proposals focuses on the writing excluded from the Mexican canon, in search of the exceptional detail, the seed of that which opposes the norm, or the subjectivities that stand out as an anomaly in the great cultural processes that our country has experienced. Observed in their particularity, the works that integrate this corpus reveal themselves as a sort of refutation to the impositions of the literary histories of the preceding centuries, by recognizing that also those who advanced along falsely marginalized itineraries were involved in negotiations, transgressions, influences and important variants in the field of tradition. Prior to this academic effort, there was no specific bibliography in the academy on many of the topics, authors or perspectives discussed here, which makes Rare. The excluded writing in Mexico a rigorous compendium, as well as a guide to search for the other names that made up the ranks of Mexican literature.

[email protected]. Recorrido en 4 escalas

Generally speaking, the objective of this article is to present a proposal for the construction of a Mexican literature history of the 20th century. During this period foundations take shape and get established throughout the journey where, among other issues, it reflects around the Humanities, its particularities and disciplines. Regarding those disciplines, it’s important to establish that the focal point rests on literature and history, specifically intellectual history. In that sense, the text borrows the ideas of Dominick LaCapra about the role of the historian and therefore of the historiography set forth in his book: History and its Limits. Subsequently the text reviews both the political, social and cultural factors and the contributions and shortcomings of the critical theory studies responsible for the configuration of a record of our literature from the past century. Lastly, the text proposes the division of the literary Century in four stops, or periods to put this proposal in motion.

En busca de la escritura perdida: los manuscritos de El libro vacío de Josefina Vicens

This editorial has the privilege of being the first to disclose in the Mexican Literature scene, a material of extraordinary importance that has remained unpublished. I’m talking about the manuscripts of El libro vacío, the first novel of Josefina Vicens published in 1958.1 There’s no need to stress the importance that such novel has had since its publication until now. In a similar mood, it’s to be understood the transcendence that making public such material would imply. Nevertheless, the purpose of this article is to analyze only some of the preeminent aspects of the manuscript, not just because of the restrictions proper of this space but also primarily because of the vast complexity that the manuscript possess. This is a first approach to the manuscripts of El libro vacío. In the future is intended to present other remarkable aspects of the material.

Matriarch of Latin American Studies in Russia. Vera Kuteishchikova’s Birth Centenary

The paper is dedicated to the famous Russian Latin Americanist Vera Nikolaevna Kuteishchikova (1919–2012), who became the second Russian woman after A. Kollontai to be awarded with the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle for her merits in the study of Mexican literature. However, V. Kuteishchikova’s specialization was not limited to the Mexican literature; her academic interests included a wide range of issues. The paper demonstrates that she laid the foundations for the scientific study of Latin American literature in Russia and outlined the ways for further research in the field. Therefore, V. Kuteishchikova’s life and work are considered in an inseparable context with the development of Latin American literary studies in Russia. The list of the Russian editions and translations of Latin American writers and the number of critical works published before the 1960s clearly confirm the fact that until then Latin American literary studies did not exist as an independent branch of philological science in Russia, since Russian scholars had a very vague notion of the Latin American literature. The first research work in philology on the Latin American literature was the monograph by V.N. Kuteishchikova Latin American Novel in the XX century (1964). The paper pays special attention to this significant work. An analysis of this book proves that its author identified and revealed a number of essential topics and problems that would be center of Latin American studies in Russia. With an amazing sagacity V.N. Kuteishchikova mapped out a program for Latin American studies for half a century ahead. These ideas were developed in her work in 1970s, in particular, in New Latin American Novel (1976), co-written with her husband, L.S. Ospovat. The paper traces the participation of V.N. Kuteishchikova in the creation of the academic five-volume History of Latin American Literatures; analyzes her last book Moscow – Mexico – Moscow. A Lifelong Road (2000), gives a spiritual portrait of the Russian scholar.