Title

Doctoring the Revolution: Medical Discourse and Interpretation in "Los De Abajo" and "El Aguila y La Serpiente"

Keywords

Bullets, Discourse, Medical diagnosis, Political discourse, Humans, Modern medicine, Discourse analysis, Healing, Folk medicine, Scientific method

Abstract

Ever since a moribund Artemio Cruz became an emblem of the fragmented, postrevolutionary history of Mexico, the individual human body and the Mex- ican body politic have been regarded as dual aspects of a single text, demand- ing a unifying act of interpretation even while the possibility of a seamless reading is perpetually undercut. However, it might well be claimed that the very synecdoche by which the human body and the Revolution are linked in Carlos Fuentes's novel is anticipated by earlier narratives of the Revolution, including, as this study aims to demonstrate, Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo and Martín Luis Guzman's El águila y la serpiente. In each of these latter works, the individual human body - as the subject of medical diagnosis and treatment - becomes a clue to broader questions about the intelligibility of the Revolution itself as a historical phenomenon. While in Los de abajo the par- ticular circumstances of Demetrio Macías's involvement in a local uprising take on a broader scope as they are refracted through questions of medical in- terpretation and authority, El águila y la serpiente questions the site of such a mediation as it raises profound questions regarding the possibility of diagnos- ing the causes of the Revolution and treating its wounds.

Original Publication Citation

“Doctoring the Revolution: Medical Discourse and Interpretation in ​Los de abajo​ and ​El águila y laserpiente​.” ​Hispanófila​ 127 (1999): 53-65.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1999

Publisher

Hispanofila

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Philosophy

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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