Abstract
This chapter uses the foundation of Bourdieu’s sociology of culture and specifically the concepts of habitus, illusio, autonomy, and literary field to study the impact of Carlos Fuentes on Mexican literature in the second half of the twentieth century. It also argues for the importance of a sociological approach to the study of literature, which makes it possible to treat the writings not as isolated works of genius but as part of a cultural practice. Regarding Fuentes and the post-revolutionary state, the chapter focuses on the idea of “Mexicanness” and how the biopolitics of the concept was deeply ingrained in the construction of a modern state. Illusio, Bourdieu’s concept, is here applied to think about the state outside of the conceptual framework that the state itself creates in order to exist and be able to “invent a sense of community and belonging”.
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Notes
- 1.
I want to thank Bronia Greskovikova for her help in the making of this chapter; her insights and her own research on my previous discussions of Bourdieu were fundamental.
- 2.
The arguments in this section synthetize Bourdieu’s main theories as developed in Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Sociología y cultura (Mexico: Grijalbo, 1990); and Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
- 3.
Denis Baranger , “The Reception of Bourdieu in Latin America and Argentina,” Revista Sociológica 2 (2008): 9. See also Bourdieu, Sociología y cultura and Juan Poblete’s chapter in this book.
- 4.
Mabel Moraña , Bourdieu en la periferia: Capital simbólico y campo cultural en América Latina (Santiago de Chile: Cuarto Propio, 2014), 105–06. See also Pedro Ángel Palou, La casa del silencio. Aproximación en tres tiempos a Contemporáneos (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998); Patricia Cabrera López, Una inquietud de amanecer. Literatura y política en México 1962–1987 (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés, 2006); Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Naciones intelectuales. Fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917–1959) (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2009).
- 5.
See Michael Burawoy and Karl von Holdt, Conversations with Pierre Bourdieu. The Johannesburg Moment (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012), 151–68.
- 6.
I have discussed this question more in extenso in Pedro Ángel Palou, El fracaso del mestizo (Mexico: Ariel, 2014).
- 7.
Pierre Bourdieu, On the State. Lectures at the Collège de France 1989–1992, trans. David Fernbach (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 158.
- 8.
Bourdieu, On the State, 160.
- 9.
Agustín Basave , México mestizo: Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Henríquez (Mexico: FCE, 1992).
- 10.
Alexandra Stern, “Mestizofilia, biotipología y eugenesia en el México Posrevolucionario: Hacia una historia de la ciencia y el estado (1920–1960),” Relaciones. Estudios de Historia y Sociedad 81 (2000): 61.
- 11.
Maarten Van Delden , Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), 10.
- 12.
Carlos Fuentes, Tiempo mexicano (Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz, 1971), 9.
- 13.
Carlos Fuentes, Los días enmascarados (México: Los presentes, 1954), 78.
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Palou, P.Á. (2018). Reading Mexican Mestizaje and Carlos Fuentes Through Bourdieu. In: Sánchez Prado, I. (eds) Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71809-5_4
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