Chapter 3 - Myth Interrupted: Identity and the Absence of Nation in En busca de Klingsor by Jorge Volpi and Amphitryon by Ignacio Padilla

Summary

At the turn of the millennium, Jorge Volpi and Ignacio Padilla received criticism from the Mexican literary establishment for ‘renouncing their Mexicanity’ by not dealing with Mexican themes in En busca de Klingsor and Amphitryon respectively. Chapter 3 examines this phenomenon in the context of Mexican cultural and political history. It argues that, with the fall of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) after 71 years, Volpi and Padilla perceived a unique historic opportunity to re-configure the relationship between intellectuals and the state. Through an analysis of the themes of ‘myth’ and Nazism in these novels, as well as in Cambio de piel by Carlos Fuentes and Morirás lejos by Jose Emilio Pacheco, structuralist and post-structuralist understandings of myth are compared. It is further argued that Volpi and Padilla engage in a narrative rehearsal of Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion that literature’s task is to ‘interrupt the myth’ of (national) identity.