El Vértigo Horizontal. La Novela Urbana de la Ciudad de México los Últimos 20 Años

Abstract

"El vértigo horizontal: La novela urbana de la ciudad de México" ("Horizontal Vertigo: The Urban Novel of Mexico City") offers a reassessment of the urban novel of Mexico City of the last twenty years, with specific focus on two novels: Materia dispuesta, by Juan Villoro, and Los detectives salvajes, by Roberto Bolaño. Guided by the ground-breaking work of geographer David Harvey, and that of Ana María Alonso and Néstor García Canclini, I argue that these novelists shed light upon the processes that have led to the transformation of past and contemporary urban space in Mexico City, and point to what Harvey terms the "urbanization of consciousness" as a marker of late capitalism. This interdisciplinary approach helps illuminate the processes that are present in the contemporary capitalist city. Of capital importance is the incorporation of an analogical reading of the novels by Bolaño and Villoro, whereby I examine the nexus between physical urban space and its artistic representation by tracing the cartographic imaginary of the characters and narrators. Both Materia dispuesta and Los detectives salvajes constitute representative examples of the contested urban space of the nationalist project of post-revolutionary Mexico, and of the spatial practices of individuals as signifiers of social class.