Pastoralism, Parricide, and the PRI: Nostalgia and Self-Awareness in Yáñez's Al filo del agua
Parricide is deeply intertwined with the notion of Revolution: the parricide at the central point of Agustín Yáñez's Al filo del agua (1947) is thematically linked to killing the father in the political sense. In this article I relate the process of the son rising to challenge the father to the overthrow of the antiguo régimen, especially in their aftermath; the outcome of both types of parricide can lead to self-awareness, especially after revolution has become "institutionalized" (as in the PRI, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional). To build my argument, I offer an excursion through the literary-historical genre of pastoral nostalgia, which informs this novel, as well as a parallel to Dostoevski's "Parable of the Grand Inquisitor" from Brothers Karamazov. I conclude that this post-traumatic introspection often leads to the classic philosophical problem of Free Will—or the lack thereof.
Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru.
Peasant and Nation offers a major new statement on the making of national politics. Comparing the popular political cultures and discourses of postcolonial Mexico and Peru, Florencia Mallon provides a groundbreaking analysis of their effect on the evolution of these nation states. As political history from a variety of subaltern perspectives, the book takes seriously the history of peasant thought and action and the complexity of community politics. It reveals the hierarchy and the heroism, the solidarity and the surveillance, the exploitation and the reciprocity, that coexist in popular political struggle. With this book Mallon not only forges a new path for Latin American history but challenges the very concept of nationalism. Placing it squarely within the struggles for power between colonized and colonizing peoples, she argues that nationalism must be seen not as an integrated ideology that puts the interest of the nation above all other loyalties, but as a project for collective identity over which many political groups and coalitions have struggled. Ambitious and bold, Peasant and Nation both draws on monumental archival research in two countries and enters into spirited dialogue with the literatures of post-colonial studies, gender studies, and peasant studies.
The Atlantic world
Atlantic Creoles explores the contested, fractured world inhabited by groups of mixedrace creoles as they negotiated the nexus between Florida, Saint-Domingue, and Cuba during the Age of Revolutions. Using six interrelated case studies, Landers argues that rather than being a marginalized set of individuals specific to any one colony this motley collection of escaped slaves, self-freed emancipists, revolutionaries, royalists, and native Americans in fact shared ideas about autonomy and freedom that reached across shifting borders. In vying for their own future, Landers contends, these individuals and groups acted as a powerful force in the history of the region, with long-lasting resonances for the wider Atlantic.