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Mario Bellatin is one of the most fascinating contemporary Mexican writers and, at the same time, one of the most challenging for the reader. If in part the interest in this writer lies in the textual quality that readers find in his novels, since many of them are comprised of fragments and discontinuous and surprising narrative threads, the challenge for the reader is to discover a literary or aesthetic logic, since through a succinct but precise style, Bellatin manages to create dystopian and unusual scenes and stories. In addition, he makes a clear distinction between “literature” and “writing,” which adds a degree of complexity to his texts, since because of this, reading becomes a theoretical, mental, and experiential exercise. For Bellatin, writing prevails over and overlaps with literature, thus providing his writing with an almost mythical quality, and, by the spiritual aspect that we find in it, also mystical. Likewise, Bellatin not only transcends the literary aspect by emphasizing through his practice that writing is creation and performance, but also, by incorporating spectacular and artistic photographs, produces an appealing aspect of transmediality. Beauty Salon, one of his first novels, has become a cult novel and a symbolic axis through which several of his recurrent themes are connected, that is: transgression of spaces and meanings; mutating bodies; transvestites; homosexuality; but also body politics, pain, and an implicit critique of society in general.

Este artículo propone que la crítica de arte que lleva a cabo Octavio Paz guarda una estrecha relación con su visión poética, particularmente la que se expone en El arco y la lira. Asimismo, aunque teóricamente hablando esta crítica se distancia de las posturas ideológicas (partidistas), pues considera la producción artístico-literaria como fuente de libertad en sí, aquí vemos que al final la crítica de Paz también llega a ser ideológica y es a través de la ideología como generará su crítica en contra de los murales de Siqueiros y Rivera; sin embargo, Paz será más condescendiente con la visión estética de Orozco, precisamente porque Orozco encaja dentro de su visión poética, y dentro de –en principio– su agenda no ideológica. This article proposes that Octavio Paz’s art criticism is closely related to his poetic vision, most particularly, as presented in his book The Bow and the Lyre. Likewise, although theoretically speaking this criticism distances itself from ideological (partisan) positions, since he considers the artistic and literary productions as sources of freedom in themselves, here we see that in the end Paz’s critique also falls pray of ideology, which is through which he will generate his critique against Siqueiros’s and Rivera’s murals; however, Paz is more praiseworthy of Orozco’s artistic vision, precisely because Orozco fits his poetic vision and, in principle, his non-ideological agenda.

Mexico ha participado de una manera prominente en el proceso de la globalizacion mundial, como productor de mercancias y como pais receptor de inversiones extranjeras. Como consecuencia directa de estas relaciones economicas, se han transformado las formas de socializacion de los individuos y la etica que los guia. Este articulo examina precisamente estas nuevas formas de socializacion y como la ambiguedad moral aparece representada a traves de los personajes de dos novelas mexicanas contemporaneas: Friccion (2008) de Eloy Urroz y Lodo (2008) de Guillermo Fadanelli. El articulo se apoya en el analisis que hace el filosofo Zygmunt Bauman al articular las nociones de “modernidad liquida” y “crisis moral” en relacion a las formas de socializacion en las sociedades postmodernas. Por ultimo, aunque ninguno de estos autores establece un codigo etico bajo el cual la sociedad o los personajes deban regirse, si exponen la relacion de la etica con la literatura. Para Urroz esta relacion queda circunscrita a la busqueda que hace el autor al explorar nuevas formas literarias, es decir, es una relacion estrictamente formal, mientras que para Fadanelli esta relacion es intrinseca.

By exposing the shortcomings of contemporary theoretical debates about love when it comes to analyzing literature, Jaimes takes Octavio Paz as a backdrop for his examination of two of Palou’s novels, Qliphoth (2003) and La profundidad de la piel (2010), through the lens of the “philosophy of love” that Palou advances in his writings. This philosophy of love encompasses an aesthetic quest that incorporates language, love, and eroticism. In the end, the impossibility of love, as portrayed in Palou’s novels, is resolved—according to Jaimes—through textual complexities which search for meaning beyond the body (the material) and the narrative form, as Palou aims to transcend the story of the lovers (and of their corporeality) to present the universality of love.

Jaimes contextualizes the emergence of the Mexican Crack writers taking into consideration historical and literary events, and provides a general overview of the topics addressed in each of the following chapters.