THE RITUALS OF IDEOLOGY AND ITS UNVEILING IN THE RITUALES DEL CAOS OF CARLOS MONSIVAIS

Abstract

Based on the analysis of three of Carlos Monsivais’ chronicles included in the anthology The Rituals of Chaos (1995), we answer the question about the kind of speech that constitutes such chronicles, this is to say, what do Monsivais’ chronicles talk about? Are they criticizing something? And if so, what kind of criticism do the Mexican writer’s texts establish? From the theoretical concepts of Manuel Asensi, Slavoj Zizek and Julio Ramos we approach his work as a re-politicization of literary discourse. In that sense, we return to the concept of discourse and put "literariadedad" between quotation marks, in the understanding that, following Asensi, a discursive semiotics can operate from different cultural manifestations, either to strengthen or question a dominant ideology, thereby showing that the interpellation of subjects from the text takes place not only from the political or philosophical treaty. From the latter, we interpret that Crónicas monsivaisinas, as discursive machinery, are a challenge to the dominant ideology in the context in which they operate, this is to say, to the corporatist Mexican nationalist ideology created in the thirties and perpetuated to present, and at the same time as an epistemological challenge to the literary project itself.