Review

Reviewed Work(s): Acercamientos a Carmen Boullosa: Actas del Simposio "Conjugarse en

infinitivo" by Barbara Dröscher and Carlos Rincón
Review by: Kristine Ibsen
Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Spring, 2002), pp. 300-302
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3246928
Accessed: 07-09-2020 18:06 UTC

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 300 Reviews HR 70 (2002)

national narratives of the nineteenth century. Merging his own socio-historic

space of the late twentieth century with Macedonio's earlier reconstruction of
the lost Elena, Piglia constructs a cyborg woman-machine and an alternative
Museo de la Novela whose multiple stories recuperate pieces of the counter-
narrative of Argentine history. This "novela rfo" begins with the foundation of E1
Rfo de la Plata in 1776 and proceeds through the history of the gauchos, the
anarchists, and the desaparecidos in the period of El Proceso. The nation must
be narrated as a multiple text, Piglia the postmodernist insists, a multivocal
antidote the monological voice of authoritarianism.
One small shortcoming in Demarfa's excellent study, is the absence of a
theory of the postmodern in discussing concepts such as the distrust of
totalizing narratives, the discursive merging of history and fiction or auto-
biography and fiction, the simultaneity of perspectives within an apparently
monological narrative, or the breakdown of the boundaries between genres
such as literature and criticism. Throughout the book Demarfa aptly employs
theoretical models of Foucault, Bakhtin, de Certeau, Bhabha, Benveniste,
and others, but a specific discussion of postmodernity and postmodernism
would have enriched the book. Her thorough reading of Piglia's intertextual
dialogue with the Generation of '37, nonetheless, is a rich contribution to the
growing body of criticism on one of Argentina's most talented contemporary
writers.

ELLEN MCCRACKEN
University of California, Santa Barbara

Acercamientos a Carmen Boullosa: Actas del Simposio "Consiugarse

en infinitivo. " Ed. Barbara Droscher and Carlos Rincon. Berlin: Walter
Frey/Tranvia, 1999. 275 pages.

A prolific poet, dramatist and novelist, Carmen Boullosa (1954) has

increasingly distinguished herself as an important presence in contemporary
Mexican literature. This collection of essays from a 1997 symposium in
Berlin is organized around four central themes: (1) the deconstruction of
utopia and national identity and examination of Boullosa's work as an
expression of postcolonialism; (2) criticism of gender relations and the
possibility of a feminist reading of Boullosa's work; (3) the "aesthetic pro-
cess" of Boullosa, between modernity and postmodernity, and (4) the posi-
tion of Boullosa in Mexican literature. Among the participants in the collec-
tion figure such prominent critics as Jean Franco and Julio Ortega, along
with scholars from Mexico, the United States and Europe.
Franco's article, "Piratas y fantasmas," opens the collection with a useful
overview of Boullosa's narrative; while Ortega's contribution, "La identidad

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 Reviews 301

literaria de Carmen Boullosa," situates her work within the parameters of

twentieth-century Mexican literature, positing the young author as repre-
sentative of a new and more intimate approach to issues of national and
personal identity. Less flattering, Christopher Domfnguez Michael's com-
mentary, while begrudgingly admitting that Boullosa's narrative does not
belong to the "generally atrocious" literature by women in Mexico, suggests
her recent work has fallen victim to the "Chac-mool syndrome" in which the
indigenous body is given more validity than the Spanish.
Sabine Coudassot-Ramfrez takes up the issue of corporeality in an
analysis of several works by Boullosa in her "Ser el esclavo que perdio su
cuerpo"; while Corinne Machoud's esoteric "Coruugando el ojo en una
movediza trampa: Carmen Boullosa y sus entrenimientos," proposes to
deconstruct Boullosa's works through the music of Mexican composer Julio
Estrada. Barbara Droscher's analysis focuses on the loss of the mother and
themes of orphanhood in Boullosa's Mejor desaparece and Antes, while
Carol Clark D'Lugo studies these novels as a reexamination of official
discourse from the perspective of the child. Along similar lines, Rike Bolte
studies the connection between memory and literary fragmentation in Mejor
desaparece. Eva Gundermann considers the same novel from the perspec-
tive of gender relations.
The compilation has several articles dealing with Boullosa's historical
novels. Javier Vilatella's paper, "Lugares de memoria, imaginacion y relato,"
heads the section with a panoramic view of Boullosa's work as it relates to
the new historical novel; Carrie Chorba employs a similar paradigm in her
study of Llanto. Erna Pfeiffer, Michaela Peters and Andreas Goosses exa-
mine the notion of utopia in Son vacas, somos puercos. Luzelena Gutierrez
de Velasco addresses the intertextual resonances in Duerme, while Gio-
vanna Minardi proposes a feminist reading of transvestism and Ute Seydel
studies the breakdown of gender roles as an example of postcolonial litera-
ture in the novel. Anna Reid considers the functions of memory and orality
in Llanto and Cielos de la tierra, while articles by Alejandro Morales, Gloria
Prado and Demetrio Anzaldo-Gonzalez refer to the utopic impulse in Cielos
de la tierra as a counterdiscursive approach to conventional hierarchies.
Susanne Thiemann and Paul Alexander Schroeder discuss parodic strategies
in La milagrosa.
Although the volume is centered primarily on a study of Boullosa's
narrative, two articles deal with her poetry. "Las camaleonicas huidizas en la
poesfa de Carmen Boullosa," by Jacobo Sefamf, draws connections between
poetic and narrative voices, while Raquel Serur's "El retardo de la niebla," is
a close reading of a single poem, "Niebla." The collection also includes a
brief interview with Boullosa and a useful selected bibliography. Despite the
occasional misstep, Acercamientos a Carmen Boullosa represents a solid

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 Revtews HR 70 (2002)
302

contribution
contributiontoto
the
the
study
study
of Boullosa's
of Boullosa's
workwork
from from
a vaxiety
a vaxiety
of perspectives
of perspectives
and theoretical approaches.

KRISTINE IBSEN
University of Notre Dame

Writing Paris: Urban Topographies of Desire in Contemporary

Latin American Fiction. By Marcy E. Schwartz. Albany: State U of
New York P, 1999. xiii + 182 pp.

While this first book by Rutgers Un

much to recommend it, it is also an
publishing. Schwartz's topic is a rich
American letters: Paris as a bohemia
lettered Amexican pilgtim, and con
focuses on two Argentinean writer
Parisian as a porteno, and Luisa Fut
two Peruvian writers (Manuel Scorz
Schwartz makes some good points,
editing would have produced a docu
coherent. Unfortunately, many acad
always the person least qualified to
resulting text is laden with redund
statements, and imprecise or incorr
Schwartz's arguments (which are q
structions like "The material subst
physicality of language that manife
Parisian maps circumscribe displace
with their own transcultural identif
empire." Loosely construed literary
exactly are "architectural tropes of
assertions such as "Like the elusive c
in these stories resist enclosure in s
subject, seek refuge in the interstic
Despite these shortcomings, Schwartz's book is worth reading. The
introduction sets up her central point: that the idealized Paris that appears
in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin American writing suffers a
radical transformation starting with the regional novel and continuing to the
present. Paris the center of revolutionary activity has become a bastion of
bourgeois, capitalist, and imperial interests, and Paris the source of inspira-
tion, aesthetic legitimization and sexual freedom has become a decadent
cesspool plagued by racism, libertinism and class warfare. Above all, Paris

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