The Mexican Dream: Or, the Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

By J.M.G. Le Clézio

Book Overview

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, J. M. G. Le Cl zio here conjures the consciousness of Mexico, powerfully evoking the dreams that made and unmade an ancient culture. Le Cl zio's haunting book takes us into the dream that was the religion of the Aztecs, a religion whose own apocalyptic visions anticipated the coming of the Spanish conquerors. Here the dream of the conquistadores rises before us, too, the glimmering idea of gold drawing Europe into the Mexican dream. Against the religion and thought of the Aztecs and the Tarascans and the Europeans in Mexico, Le Cl zio also shows us those of the "barbarians" of the north, the nomadic Indians beyond the pale of the Aztec frontier. Finally, Le Cl zio's book is a dream of the present, a meditation on what in Amerindian civilizations--in their language, in their way of telling tales, of wanting to survive their own destruction--moved the poet, playwright, and actor Antonin Artaud and motivates Le Cl zio in this book. His own deep identification with pre-Columbian cultures, whose faith told them the wheel of time would bring their gods and their beliefs back to them, finds fitting expression in this extraordinary book, which brings the dream around. "We are lucky to have in Le Cl zio a writer of great quality who brings his particular sensibility and talent here to remind us of the very nature of the rituals and myths of the civilizations of ancient Mexico; he provides us with descriptions as precise as they are mysterious." --Le Figaro

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226110028
• ISBN13: 9780226110028
• Release Date: December 1993
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Grad School Lit Crit anyone?

*****I've read the book and contend it has nothing to do with the following: moribundity Nietzsche and Heidegger signs, marks and traces signifier deconstructed textuality a congealed encrustation anthropomorphic metaphors radical semiotics Plato's Republic verisimilitude the hobby horse of "S/Z" Roland Barthes writ large Derridean erasure an antediluvian age Fredric Jameson said, "Postmodernity is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good." Baudelaire Huysmans Wilde prisonhouse of artifice il n'y a pas de hors texte. valorization of Gilles Deleuze Rabelais and Villon through to de Nerval, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Jarry, Celine, Eluard, Artaud, Bataille, Michaux the maudlin Verlaine Camus-esque hymns *****and only slightly more to do with the following (minus the flowering allegations at the end): It is this vision of infinity that serves as the central axis of the entire book. In revealing the infinitude that lies at the core of Indian life (and, by implication, *ourselves*), Le Clezio unearths a very different image of the Amerindians than what is traditionally conceived. Yes, the Indians were belligerent and bloodthirsty. Indeed, they could be despotic and cruel, though it is important to note that we are framing all of this in the timorous moral categories of the West. Yet, perhaps they gave us a glimpse of a democracy more radical than we had ever imagined, a Holderlinian utopia where God infuses every atom, every millisecond, every corpuscule. A world where desire is no longer a dirty secret, where dreams are no longer sublimated wish fulfilments, but passageways into eternity. In excavating the collective dreams of a devastated race, Le Clezio implores us to believe in our own, in a love that will overflow the dams that authority has erected and saturate the social body. You can call Le Clezio what you will, but it is certain that he is not a cynic. If that makes him a retrograde romantic, then so be it.

Great Untold Story

This book really gets to the bottom of the conquering of the Amerindian civilizations. Le Clezio exposes the conquering for what it was, without pointing fingers or trying to push a thesis. Le Clezio gives the facts and lets the reader decide what they think of the occurence. It is hard to read this book and not feel sympathetic to the Amerindians in their situation. Wonderful, wonderful history read.

A Song Of Joy

One of the reasons for literature's increasing moribundity is our seemingly incurable infatuation with language. In many senses, we can blame the French (though they, in turn, would blame Nietzsche and Heidegger). With the so-called 'linguistic turn', the human subject has been transformed into a depository of signs, marks and traces who is irrevocably alienated from 'reality' (itself an empty signifier that must be deconstructed) by an impenetrable veil of textuality. The world that surrounds us has become a congealed encrustation of anthropomorphic metaphors, perception is merely a historical residue. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that literature offered so little resistance to this obsession with radical semiotics- having been banished for millenia, deconstruction finally offers the poet full citizenship in Plato's Republic. As such, it is often nice to witness the ascent of a writer who is an uncompromising realist. By realism, of course, I don't mean the hackneyed, 19th century pursuit of verisimilitude that would become the hobby horse of "S/Z" Roland Barthes, but philosphical realism, the belief that objectivity and reality (writ large, without Derridean erasure) does exist absent the perceiving subject. Of course, such thinking strikes us as being a relic of an antediluvian age- how can one even begin to speak of Reality when the media and the internet are manufacturing reality and subjectivities at an unprecedented rate? As Fredric Jameson said, "Postmodernity is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good." Baudelaire had already read the portents in the 19th century, Huysmans and Wilde exulted in this prisonhouse of artifice. The verdict is out- all of those "residual zones of 'nature' or 'being'" (Jameson) have been revealed to be mirages, oases; check your archaic mystical fantasies at the door, and welcome to the prisonhouse of language. In here, only one law is sovereign: il n'y a pas de hors texte. In this light, "The Mexican Dream" is a rather strange book. Perhaps, though, the current (justified) valorization of Gilles Deleuze and a growing interest in deep ecology bode well for the reception of this book. My own fascination with J.M.G. Le Clezio stems, perhaps, in my overwhelming affection for a certain strand of French literature, one that stretches from Rabelais and Villon through to de Nerval, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Jarry, Celine, Eluard, Artaud, Bataille, Michaux. These, I would say, are not the accursed 'poetes maudits', nourished by self-pity and acute alienation (it is not much of a surprise that it was the maudlin Verlaine who coined the term),but the unblemished innocents who remained intransigent in the face of universal corruption. Le Clezio's early writings are firmly within that tradition- defiant rhapsodies to the human imagination in the face of global commodification. While sharing the Surrealists' mystical inclinations, however, Le Clezio was also unabashed in his