"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.

This project explores democracy as a way of life (radical democracy) by drawing from both North and Latin American philosophers. I work with ideas from Paulo Freire (Brazil) and Luis Villoro (Mexico) to develop (a) a criticism of mainstream liberal assumptions regarding freedom, tolerance and the nature of the relationship between the individual and the community as well as (b) a criticism of liberal democracy as a political system, and (c) a formulation of democracy as a way of life. This is relevant because the experiences in Freire's and Villoro?s historical background (colonialism, feudalism, dictatorships) have been neglected from the Western liberal approach which emphasizes property rights, individual rights and community obligations towards the individual. Working with philosophers whose theories have been informed by the liberal tradition but whose work was developed in response to living in environments of dehumanizing oppression and corruption provides us with relevant criticisms of the Western liberal tradition as well as its assumptions regarding central concepts such as freedom, tolerance and community.

The following study is a critique of the democratic pursuits in Latin America. This thesis focuses on twentieth century political developments in Peru, Brazil and Mexico. The question that guides and serves as the impetus and perimeter of this project is how have the political theories of Latin American in the twentieth century moved from rigid ideological positions to more pragmatic approaches. To develop this argument, I examine the theories and conclusions of José Carlos Mariátegui (1894 -1930), the conscientização pedagogical approach of Paulo Freire (1921-1997), and Luis Villoro’s radical democracy (1922 - ). These three philosophers, have as their goal, a society characterized by equality between human beings, and the respect and empowerment of traditionally oppressed people. The main finding of this study is that Latin America has moved from ideologically based political approaches to social change to approaches that are characterized as pragmatic.

La presente tesis doctoral aborda una selección representativa la obra del escritor mexicano Juan Villoro, centrada en la forma en que este concibe culturalmente México en tanto que país integrante de una plataforma trasnacional, que llamamos “Hispanoamérica”, frente a otros rótulos muy difundidos como “América Latina”, que estarían del lado de otro tipo de intereses que el trabajo de este autor critica acusadamente, porque en ellos identifica el origen de una interpretación sumamente inexacta de los conflictos de su país. Para sistematizar lo anterior hemos llevado a cabo una exposición de los diferentes significados que se atribuyen a una palabra actualmente muy en boga, la “identidad”, capaz de recubrir colectivos humanos muy amplios, sobre todo en el caso de las cuestiones que tienen que ver con lo que aquí se llama “problema nacional”, que analizamos en algunas de sus modulaciones más recurrentes. Frente a los estudiosos que quieren ver en la llamada identidad colectiva el sustento psicológico que más tarde habría de dar forma a los cimientos de proyectos de gran calado y trascendencia como la nación política, ofrecemos un acercamiento histórico y filosófico que nos ha permitido llegar a lo que denominamos “alternativa hispanista”, que consideramos más oportuna de acuerdo con la identidad y la unidad de México en tanto que componente de la hispanidad. En semejante contexto, es posible situar la obra de Villoro en un recorrido más amplio que la libra del nacionalismo esencialista aunque sin desposeerla de las características que en determinado momento pueden identificarla con un proyecto de literatura nacional, sin perjuicio de que además hemos establecido influencias que desbordan el ámbito del español como lengua. En México, la identidad colectiva encuentra en Octavio Paz y El laberinto de la soledad su relato más divulgado, alrededor del cual existe un consenso que lo exime de su condición de mito, de ahí que durante décadas haya sido el basamento ideológico de buena parte de las grandes figuras de la ficción literaria que se construye en México, con el caso de Carlos Fuentes como especialmente emblemático. Paz y Fuentes servirán de contraste con generaciones que vendrán después, como la de Medio siglo, que hará las veces de transición entre los escritores posrevolucionarios y aquellos que, como Villoro, responden a otros postulados. Estos últimos encontrarán su visión del mundo en otras obras ensayísticas, como La jaula de la melancolía, de Roger Bartra, quien critica a Paz y propone otra forma de otorgarle sentido a México como referente. Todo ello será aprovechado por Villoro, quien por medio de las formas de lo cómico (desarrolladas por él a partir de la narrativa de Jorge Ibargüengoitia) se distanciará en varios sentidos de antecesores como Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, José Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes y el mismo Fuentes, aunque no dejará de alimentar la idea de una literatura que, por medio de la lengua española, le permite establecer un complejo sistema de referencias con todos los países donde también se habla este idioma. Villoro es un escritor crítico del nacionalismo, aunque eso no lo acerca automáticamente con las tendencias de carácter posmoderno que con frecuencia se le atribuyen, porque en su obra los personajes aluden a un conjunto de instituciones que son las que permiten hablar de una alternativa hispanista, ampliamente aprovechada por Villoro, ya sea bajo la forma de un mercado común o bien una tradición cuya relevancia no se agota. / Hispanic American Idea in the work of Juan Villoro This thesis is devoted to analyze the work of the Mexican writer Juan Villoro, whose literature will continue to gain presence in the field of literature written in Spanish. Therefore, this is a systematic study of the way in which the work of Villoro can be placed in the context of twentieth-century Mexican literature, while this is a result of a particularly complex process and here we proceed to unravel. We start from the idea that the so-called collective identity is often associated with psychological peculiarities that would be in the ideological foundation of the political nations. Faced with this idea, which seems insufficient, we recover far-reaching historical processes that will result in a transnational platform as Hispanic, that we will overcome essentialism. In Mexico, the work of Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, will be considered when configuring canonical character of the inhabitants of that country, according to the poet, conditioned for the myth of pre-Columbian roots. Other scholars such as Roger Bartra in The Cage of Melancholy, will criticize that belief to open the way to much more skeptical positions, as take place with Villoro. Juan Villoro will use this crisis to restate Mexican identity through the forms of the comic for his novels and essays, in the line of Jorge Ibargüengoitia and others. This can be seen in a collection of stories, which are proof of that radical break with the obscurantist myth, recognized as a simple anachronism. However, that deconstruction does not lead to a mere postmodernism, as they say about Villoro, who never fails to appeal to the Spanish language, including an extended set of institutions able to unite the Spanish-speaking countries.

This thesis identifies continuities and disruptions within the tradition of literary allegory in Latin America and critically revisits the category of “national allegory” (Jameson 1986) in order to articulate an interpretative model suited to contemporary “transnational allegorical fiction”. Based on the analysis of seven Mexican novels that register the transition of neoliberalism from the political-economic order to a form of biopolitical control (Althusser, Foucault, Žižek), I identify the emergence of what I call a “transnational affective field”: a symbolic horizon, alternative to the nation, where the prospective function of foundational romances (Sommer) and the retrospective function of mourning akin to postdictatorial fiction (Avelar), converge. This ideological device negotiates power relations, facilitates the transfer of local/global meaning, promotes intercultural empathy and compromise, and denounces mechanisms of exclusion; thereby, reconfiguring the affective and political functions of allegory in Latin American fiction. Part One discusses critical approaches to allegorical fiction in both Latin American and World literatures. Part Two compares the representation of the binomial nation/world in three historiographic metafictions by Carmen Boullosa, Francisco Rebolledo and J.E. Pacheco through recent approaches in post-/de-colonial and memory studies. Part Three examines the depiction of the nation as simulacrum and the figuration of postmodern subjectivities in Jorge Volpi and Juan Villoro from a poststructuralist perspective. It also contends that Álvaro Enrigue’s and Valeria Luiselli’s novels are representative of an emergent meta-allegorical imagination that, in an ironic reversal of allegory (de Man), simultaneously constructs it as a mechanism of ideological control as well as a conscious strategy to resist commodification and symbolic violence (Bourdieu) in the contemporary world. The analysis demonstrates the vitality of Mexican transnational allegorical fiction as a socio-political and affective counter-hegemonic discourse that also functions as an effective strategy of recognition in the international literary field.