Beyond the Ruins of the Organized City: Urban Experiences Through the Metro in Contemporary Mexican Literature

Abstract

François analyzes recent representations of the city in Mexican literature that draw on cultural imaginaries of the underground as a means to escape the order-disorder dichotomy. While leaving aside more traditional imaginations of the underground as a preferred setting for horror stories and the fantastic, she explores narratives by Mexican authors that look into the question of the city and urban experience through the exploration of the underground, as is the case of El huésped de Guadalupe Nettel and several short stories by Mario Bellatin. François argues that these texts turn to the “view from below” in order to question readings of the city in terms of its (non)conformity to a normative, modernist ideal. Instead, they propose examples of urban experience that are based on a more flexible, nomadic sense of social existence and the aesthetic potential that is activated by alternative conceptions of displacement through the city.