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The Labyrinth Of Solitude (1950)

by Octavio Paz(Favorite Author)

4.1 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Grove Press

review 1: Es muy interesante leer ideas que fueron muy importantes hace 60 años, pero dentro de eso, en veces (muchas) está difícil seguirle la pista a cada ensayo, y eso después de un rato le baja el interés de terminarlo.Los primeros y los últimos ensayos son los mejores (y muy buenos), pero en medio hay unos muy tripeados, que para leerlos y entenderlos está cabrón, y por lo mismo, se me hicieron muy "aburridos".Recomendaría leer solo los buenos, interesantes, y fácil de leer, a menos que seas un experto en la historia socio-política de la era de la revolución (yo no soy).
review 2: Paz wrote an interesting inspection of the Mexican story with the Labyrinth of Solitude. He has crafted a meditation on the contemporary Mexican in two parts. The first part ... moreof the book discusses the cultural aspects that contribute to the Mexican as neurotic and the second part discusses the historical and political aspects that contribute to this state. But it is important to note, this is sociological psychology; a mental health evaluation of the Mexican mind. However, Paz does not attempt an objective analysis for this endeavor. He acts within those very traditions in some cases unwittingly exemplifying them. For instance, Paz in nearly every breath exudes a sort of nihilistic emptiness to his observations. Also, he does not talk about dates and places like a typical western historical text. Instead, he paints the pictures in a continual progression as if a story is being told like a tale.The cultural idiosyncrasies Paz mainly explores include language, interpersonal behaviors, and traditions that Mexicans employ. In each case, the primary result of this analysis is a pretension of self in the social world. To Paz, the contemporary Mexican hides the internal self through a series of cultural norms and expectations that tradition dictates in the same manner that a mask hides your actual expressions and intentions through the guise of your choosing. The reason for this seems to be these traditions which are founded on false histories carried down from a culture that is not their own.This leads us to the second part of the book, the historical and cultural tumult that has lead to contemporary Mexican society. On the one hand, the indigenous tradition of myth and organic spontaneity was usurped by a nearly antithetical colonial reformation by the Spaniards. The conquerors the Mayans and other tribes own religion against them to convert them to a new order that so alienated them. But this conversion was essentially a self-repression which caused a sort of bi-polar state built on the colonial model. Under this society, despite the coming age of international revolution, the Mexican Revolution was inevitable and he likes to cite the first of the major 20th Century revolutions. This revolution was also doomed to fail though since the philosophical traditions of liberalism and positivism were grafted onto the interstitial colonial period which merely served then as a buffer from the old world to the contemporary society. But since the replacement philosophy was not congruent with the old world tradition which is in the bones of the contemporary Mexican, it merely makes more stronger the pretension pervading the modern day.Quite frankly, I find this a very depressing description of the Mexican mind. And there is plenty of self-fulfilling prophecy built into this model. So although there can be little doubt of the picture he paints, I do not feel it is a positive picture to produce. Perhaps it is necessary to identify these series issues in the Mexican mind if healing is to begin. But it seems in modern day Mexico, perhaps it is more a story of "two Mexicos" with the south being the more indigenous and authentic while Mexico City and the north is more tied into the post-revolutionary world modeled after the American tradition preceding it.The fact is Paz is a Pragmatist and his analysis even with its almost intense nihilism can be an optimistic one (as the final chapter shows, but not without its depressing view of love). Indeed Pragmatism probably most closely aligns with the pre-colonial Mexican more than any other, yet he never truly makes that connection. His analysis is mostly a critique of all the failed intellectuals or revolutionaries and all the counter-productive terms and social behaviors without ever coming out and saying the very basis of this analysis is the saving grace. And perhaps this is why Mexico is more divided then ever before. Without a progressive, socialist example (the Zapatistas?) of what Mexico could be by rejecting the outside influences which destroyed it in transforming it, the masses languish under an order they do not identify with and are not supported by. Meanwhile, the situation is reaching a boil now more than ever, as the gangs of Mexico which ultimately can be viewed as the populist, pre-colonial expression of social organization literally at war with the powers of state which are the modern expression of the positivist, liberal order the revolution put in control. A pragmatist can find the best of both of these two adversaries to be the basis of a healed Mexican social order. But as long as we return to dialectics as our description of the model, progress is no where in site. less

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