Engendering a revolution: Crisis, feminine subjects, and the fictionalization of 1968 in three contemporary Mexican novels by women

Abstract

The objectives of this dissertation are the following. To define the parameters of the novela del 68 and to argue for the conceptualization of a gendered novela del 68 as expressed in the analysis of the three novels under consideration: Panico o peligro, by Maria Luisa Puga (1983), Los octubres del otono, by Martha Robles (1982), and Los testigos, by Emma Prieto (1985; to analyze the alternative discourses and subjectivities textualized in these novels; and to analyze the "gendering" and fictionalization of the 1968 Mexican student movement. Chapter 1 provides a detailed introduction to the novela del 68 as defined in contemporary Mexican literary and cultural criticism. It provides a general overview of the major works of the novela del 68 along with a discussion of the critics who have been instrumental in defining, analyzing, and codifying the novela del 68. Chapter 2 examines how Panico o Peligro, by Maria Luisa Puga establishes a dialogical relationship to the representative works of the novela del 68 as defined by Medina and Martre. It is argued that this relationship is marked by a central structural conflict between assimilation of a traditional testimonial/autobiographical model, and differentiation by means of the strategic narrative device of autobiographical simulation. Chapter 3 examines Martha Robles's Los octubres del otono , and proposes that the novel deconstructs the traditional novela del 68's binary oppositional model of representation. This chapter presents an argument for the novel as a radial reading of history, incorporating the semiotic theories of paragrams as developed by Julia Kristeva and Severo Sarduy. Chapter 4 analyzes how Emma Prieto's Los testigos refocuses the cultural and political conflicts of 1968 through the lens of class and social identity. This chapter shows how the novel recasts the internal struggles of the MPE in the guise of a political love triangle, utilizing the language of popular detective and romance fiction to sublimate discourses of class power and masculine social and cultural hegemony. It is argued that the novel subverts a model of identity construction in the traditional novela del 68 which evades the problematics of class and gender identity.