A new synthetic dye

• Main Author: Powell, Vincent Robert
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9021

This thesis examines Carlos Monsiváis's crónicas, focusing on the transformative nature of language and signification. By incorporating multiple perceptions into his narration, and by resorting to irony, sarcasm, satire and parody, he challenges and undermines the dominant class's hegemonic discourse, and in the process, he underlines the pluralistic nature of Mexican society. In chapter one we analyze the characteristics of the crónicas in so far as they oscillate between journalism and literature. Chapter two focuses on the crucial role assigned to urban popular culture, and we investigate how its myths, symbols and beliefs are resignified within the contemporary urban setting. Chapter three explores the narrational posture because this is how the author shapes and conveys his or her point of view. In Monsiváis's crónicas, this narrative point of view is multifarious, such that a kaleidoscope of viewpoints are presented to the reader. Chapter four is an exegesis of the various languages which are put into play in Monsiváis's crónicas, highlighting the conflictive and contradictory opinions of the different sectors of Mexican society. In relating Bakhtin's idea of heteroglossia to Monsiváis's texts, we accentuate that this appropriation of numerous languages implies that they compete for signification and social transformation, given that meanings are reformulated as previous discourses are incorporated into new forms and contexts. Therefore, Monsiváis's crónicas echo Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel" and his idea of language as an open system where signification is not limited to the interpretations imposed by the dominant classes, but rather it is in a constant state of collision and resignification according to the concrete and ceaseless flow of utterances produced in dialogues between speakers in specific social and historical contexts. In this sense, Monsiváis crónicas could be read as a democratic project.