Research Catalog

Title

The uses of failure in Mexican literature and identity / by John A. Ochoa.

Author

Ochoa, John A. (John Andres), 1967-

Publication

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2004.

Supplementary Content

Publisher description

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 244 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Going beyond the simple narrative of self-defeat, this book presents a model of failure as a source of knowledge and renewed self-awareness. Studying the relationship between national identity and failure, John Ochoa revisits the foundational texts of Mexican intellectual and literary history, the "national monuments," and offers a new vision of the pivotal events that echo throughout Mexican aesthetics and politics."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Mexico > Historiography
• Mexican prose literature > History and criticism
• National characteristics, Mexican, in literature
• Failure (Psychology) in literature
• Literature and history > Mexico

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-232) and index.

Contents

Introduction : the broken monument, or failure as a source of knowledge -- Ch. 1. Education and entropy in Bernal Diaz del Castillo's war to stop time -- Ch. 2. Compromised free markets in El Periquillo Sarniento : teachers, Albureros, and other shouters -- Ch. 3. Alexander von Humboldt's work on Mexico, cultural allegory, and the limits of vision -- Ch. 4. Jose Vasconcelos and the necessities of failure -- Ch. 5. The threats of collapse in Cambio de piel (or Fuentes the Frail) -- Ch. 6. Guillermo Gomez-Pena, bordering on madness and performing liminality -- Conclusion : General Santa Anna's leg and other failings.

ISBN

0292705735 ((cl.) : alk. paper)

LCCN

2004002879

OCLC

• ocm54454679
• SCSB-5132757

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries