City Fictions: Language, Body, and Spanish American Urban Space (The Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory)

Introduction -- By fire, water, or stone : the destruction of imagery in Octavio Paz's "Ciudad de México" series -- Aesthetics, politics, and the urban in Julio Cortázar's short stories -- Uncanny dispersions in Cristina Peri Rossi's La nave de los locos -- Scripting the city : Diamela Eltit's Lumpérica and Vaca sagrada -- The spectacle as metaphor : urban disorder in Carlos Monsiváis's Los rituales del caos -- Conclusion. "Using concepts from urban and cultural studies, City Fictions examines the representation of the city in the works of five important late-twentieth century Spanish American writers: Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar, Christina Peri Rossi, Diamela Eltit, and Carlos Monsivais. While each of these writers is influenced at least partially by a specific Spanish American city - be it Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, or Santiago - they share ways in which they fictionalize the city. They all equate language and body with urban space. In these metaphors, language breaks down and the body disintegrates, creating a disturbing picture of violent decline. Amanda Holmes demonstrates how representation of the city through metaphors of linguistic and corporeal rupture as well as of new vital human possibilities, reflects a response to both political violence and untenable economic policies in Latin America during the last three decades of the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET. Using concepts from urban and cultural studies, City Fictions examines the representation of the city in the works of five important late-twentieth-century Spanish American authors, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar, Christina Peri Rossi, Diamela Eltit, and Carlos Monsavais. While each of these authors is influenced at least partially by a specific Spanish American city, be it Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, or Santiago, the element that brings them together is the way in which the city is fictionalized in their work: they all equate both language and the body with urban space. In these metaphors, language breaks down and the body disintegrates, creating a disturbing picture of violent decline. The poetry of Paz associates the urban surroundings with dissolving sentences and desensitized, fingertips; for Cortazar, characters walking through cities are seen as both creating and unraveling written texts;