Technified Muses: Reconfiguring National Bodies in the Mexican Avant-Garde

Examining representations of the female
body in postrevolutionary genre literature

In
this volume, Sara Potter uses the idea of the muse from Greek mythology and the
cyborg from posthuman theory to consider the portrayal of female characters and
their bodies in Mexican art and literature from the 1920s to the present. Examining
genres including science fiction, cyberpunk, and popular fiction, Potter finds
that ＂technified muse＂ figures often appear in these texts at moments of
violence and sociopolitical transformation.

Potter
begins by looking at two avant-garde movements that emerged in the aftermath of
the Mexican Revolution: the Estridentistas and the Contemporáneos. Moving to the
＂Mexican Miracle,＂ a midcentury period of economic prosperity, she considers the
work of surrealists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo within their cultural
and political climates. She then addresses the aftermath of the 1968 student
massacre in Tlatelolco as explored in Fernando del Paso’s Palinuro de México and Juan García Ponce’s Crónica de la intervención. Finally, Potter engages with the era that
began with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and Zapatista
rebellion, drawing from Bernardo Fernández’s Gel azul, Guadalupe Nettel’s El
huésped, and Karen Chacek’s La caída
de los pájaros.

Technified Muses shows that during
these key periods, writers created muse-like characters that interact with the technological
discourses of their times. These figures reflect the increasing emphasis on
science and progress throughout the twentieth century, embodying the
modernization of Mexico while offering parallel narratives that challenge official
portrayals of the nation’s history.

Publication
of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American
Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.