Imaginación Poética y Crisis Social en la Poesía Mexicana Contemporánea

This dissertation is a study of three recent books by contemporary Mexican authors born in the/n1970s. The dissertation examines the relationship between textual strategies and the ongoing/nsocial and political crisis of the last two decades in Mexico, in the work of the poets María/nRivera, Heriberto Yépez and Dolores Dorantes. In my reading, these works present the reader/nwith new and radical ways of understanding the relationship between literature and society, and/nmore particularly, between poetry and politics. Together, they also represent an important/ncritique of the cultural and poetic legacy of figures like the late poet Octavio Paz./nThe first chapter focuses on the work of the poet María Rivera, particularly her two poems, "Los/nmuertos" (2011) and "Oscuro" (2017). I propose that the "anomalous poetics" proposed by/nRivera serves as a vehicle for a double criticism. On the one hand, she questions the hegemonic/nnotion of a type of cosmopolitan and seemingly atemporal literature, a notion established largely/nby the late poet Octavio Paz, under whom Rivera herself was formed. On the other hand, she also/nquestions the implicit agreements through which contemporary literary communities are/nconstituted. At the textual level, this critique translates into the emergence of thematic and/nformal elements that account for a markedly political new poetics on the horizon of/ncontemporary Mexican literature. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the poem "Los/nmuertos", written in 2011, the historical importance of which lies in having been one of the first/npoems to openly break with the literary silence around the escalation of violence caused by/nmilitarization. The systematic use of textual strategies such as repetition and lists in the poem not/nonly makes visible the countless dead and disappeared in Mexico over the last two decades, but/nit also problematizes the supposed linearity and continuity with which Mexican history has been/nperceived. That is, the poem formally interrupts a historical "filiative" vision of the nation, based/non the continuity of alleged symbolic and ethnic elements. Instead, the poem articulates an/n"affiliate" totality founded on affinity and empathy between diverse groups./nThe second chapter studies the book Transnational Battle Field (2017) by the poet Heriberto/nYépez. The chapter pays attention especially to the modalities with which the author explores/nsocial antagonisms and some of the transformations in subjectivity derived from neoliberalism./nThe transnational lens that Yépez has employed in his entire work is also present in/nTransnational Battle Field, a book that was written directly in English. This focus opens other/navenues of reflection beyond the national context within which a large part of recent literary/nworks thematize contemporary violence and social crisis. In dialogue with the decolonial/nthinking of Frantz Fanon, Yépez invites the reader to recognize the social praxis that is/npotentially present in works of art; such praxis is able to generate and question critical/nsubjectivities, and question the current cultural, linguistic and aesthetic homogenization at a/ntransnational level./nThe third and final chapter analyzes the book Estilo by the poet Dolores Dorantes. Her book/ntextually displays affects and images that, in my reading, mimic and represent economic/nprocesses that inform the ongoing climate of violence against poor working-class women in the/nU.S.-Mexico border area. For Dorantes and contemporary thinkers like Silvia Federici, violence/nagainst women must be understood as an expression that goes beyond the cultural, and that/npoints to a complex knot of violent economic change derived from the transformation of capital/nworldwide. Dorantes' book captures and represents elements that suggest phenomena such as/npopulation displacement, the attack on working women and the production of value through/nlabor exploitation. Circulating within a landscape of contemporary misogynistic imaginary, as/nwell as a series of economic processes, with the use of a "nosotras" that articulates the poetic/nvoice of the book, Dorantes criticizes the notion of a traditional and unified lyrical subject that is/nstill predominant in Mexican literature./nThis dissertation represents an invitation to read a group of contemporary works that imagine and/nbuild a radical relationship between contemporary textualities, political and poetic imaginations/nand social crisis.

Advisor: del Valle, Ivonne