Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

'En un país como éste': Contesting the Nation, Resisting Modernity in Demasiado amor by Sara Sefchovich

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (2006), 83, (4), 367–384.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3828/bhs.83.4.5
Language
English
Pages
18

Abstract

It is now widely accepted that the oil scare followed by the devaluation of the peso in 1982 triggered an unprecedented political, economic and social crisis that had ramifications across civil society in Mexico. This led, as Roger Bartra asserts, to serious splits and shifts within the unity of the 'revolutionary family'. It is out of these splits and shifts that women's voices begin to emerge in the cultural arena in Mexico. Clearly this is not the first instance of cultural production by women in Mexico but it is the first time that they are positioned as both substantive producers and consumers of culture. They are, therefore, deeply implicated in the modernization project of that decade which in turn leads to an ambivalence in the nature of their voice, a new freedom that is enabled and empowered through forces that were also in many cases, deeply repressive. It is this ambivalence that haunts the pages of Sara Sefchovich's best-selling novel, Demasiado amor (1990), and it is the nature of the ambivalent relationship to the nation in particular that I would like to explore in this article. In my view, the text constitutes what Homi Bhabha terms a 'counter-narrative of the nation', staging an attack on the totalising narrative of modernity and thus contesting the limits of the modernizing project.

Debido a la escasez petrolera y la devaluación del peso en México durante la década de los ochenta, se precipitó una crisis económica política y social sin precedencia que afectó gravemente la sociedad civil. Esto llevó, como afirma Roger Bartra, a una fragmentación en la unidad de la 'familia revolucionaria'. De esta fragmentación surge una nueva voz, la voz femenina, que se establece con fuerza dentro del terreno cultural. No es, por supuesto, la primera vez que aparece esta voz femenina pero es claramente la primera vez que la mujer se sitúa como productora y tambien como consumidora de la cultura. Esta voz está implicada entonces en el projecto modernizador que tanto ocupó a los gobiernos mexicanos de la década de los ochenta y por lo tanto es una voz llena de ambivalencia. Por un lado constituye una libertad pero una libertad concedida y a veces definida por fuerzas a veces muy represivas. En este artículo examino la novela Demasiado amor por Sara Sefchovich, publicada en 1990. Quiero enfocar mi estudio sobre esta ambivalencia que tanto afecta a la conceptualización de la nación en la novela. En mi opinión Demasiado amor constituye lo que Homi Bhabha denomina 'una contra-narrativa de la nación', desenmarascando la narrativa totalizadora de la nación e interrogando los límites del proyecto modernizador.

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Finnegan, Nuala