Durn, Javier. Jos Revueltas: Una potica de la disidencia.

Universidad Veracruzana:
Xalapa, Veracruz, 2002.
Durns study presents a Bakhtinian influenced reading of Revueltas work that
principally focuses on four novels, Los muros de agua, Los das terrenales, Los errores,
and El apando. While some studies have signaled contradictions and conflicts between
the Mexican authors ideology and his aesthetics, this book focuses on the strain of
dissidence that links Revueltas political activity and his literature. Adapted from a
dissertation, the study emphasizes an evolving stance as it examines the novels
chronologically and integrates the authors autobiographic writings as guiding referents.
Andrea Revueltas and Philippe Cherons preface opens by placing Durans discussion in
the context of other work on Revueltas and describes the latters dissidence as both
critique and self-critique (18). To address his topic, the critic proposes to analyze three
fundamental aspects of the texts treated: la relacin entre ideologa y tcnica narrativa,
el vnculo entre ideologa y disidencia, a travs de la temtica de la prisin, and el
tema del grotesco (30). The study uses reader-friendly theoretical discussions, close
readings, and an attentiveness to social context to offer suggestive readings of Revueltas
novels within a unified trajectory.
Though the book refers to a number of critics and critical tendencies, the work of
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, a near contemporary of Revueltas and a figure who also
had a troubled relationship with the communist party, informs much of the discussion.
Each of the three parts of the book opens with an orientation that takes up a distinct
Bakhtinian concept: in the first, dialogic aspects; in the second, the prison as a
chronotope; and, in the third, the grotesque as a means of critiquing existing social
relations. The chapters that follow then examine the texts using that perspective.
The first part of the book, made up of three chapters, proposes the concept of
idialoga as a tool for examining Los muros de agua, Los das terrenales, and Los errores.
For Durn, the term idialoga combines Bakhtins concepts of ideology and dialogism to
recognize the discursive modes representing ideological marginalization, particularly the
narrative vehicle of introspection (39). Thus, the three chapters focus on the
philosophical internal dialogues of principal characters. Each examines the characters
struggles with socialist ideology as they face the difficulties of incarceration or of
participation in a communist party that is both marginalized and dogmatic. Here Durn
signals that the novels criticize an emphasis on doctrine that negates the possibility of
dissidence. Though I concur with Durns observations here, I remain unsure of the need
for his neologism. As he himself notes, an individuals ideology reflects dialogism and
dialogues (interior or otherwise) are fraught with ideology (55-56). Regardless, the
reception of Revueltas work supports the accuracy of Durns larger comment on the
inflexibility of ideologues. Ironically, as Durn notes, some critics rejected the authors
narrative innovations for deviating from strict ideas of socialist realism. The second
chapter, which discusses Los das terrenales, provides the strongest treatment here in its
balance of textual detail and contextual discussion.
The four chapters composing the second part take up the chronotope of the prison
as a critical space that frames the marginalized discourses in Revueltass work. Not only
does the authors experience in prison color the critique of penitentiary conditions found
in his first novel, argues Durn, but the repressive clandestine atmosphere that dominates

in the Los das terrenales and Los errores causes even Mexico City to become a
metaphoric prison. The last chapter proposes that Revueltass last novel, El apando,
published after the authors stay in Lecumberri following the 1968 Tlaltelolco massacre,
extends this metaphor. Depicting a jail conflict over drugs, the novel suggests the idea of
the world as a prison, criticizes societal restrictions that alienate and dehumanize, and
signals the useful delinquency drugs present to capitalist systems in crisis. Here, too,
though I might also quibble with Durns use of terminology as he metaphorically applies
the chronotope of the prison to the atmosphere of Mexico City, his overall reading
persuades.
The three chapters of the final part focus on Revueltas use of the grotesque as a
discursive and aesthetic strategy. Durn argues that exploring the extreme form of
alienation in the established bourgeois society leads to the grotesquerie of marginalized
subjects and allows a transgressive critique of the relations between class, dissidence and
ideology. This exploration leads, in the three earlier novels, from the monstrous
proletariat to the abject hero figure, disconnected from the deformed Communist party.
El apando, in turn, pushes onward to the exemplary abjection of the character El Carajo.
For Durn, this character epitomizes Revueltas aesthetic strategy in not offering the
comfortable distance of a denunciatory metaphor, but instead representing the negative
possibilities of the communist dialectic ideal and the extreme alienation of capitalist
society.
The strength of Durns book lies in its accessibility and the general cohesion of
its argument. Though dealing with several theoretical perspectives, the text avoids
jargon-heavy language and amenably orients the reader. In addition, this book brings
together nicely textual explication, references to other philosophical and autobiographic
writings by Revueltas, and relevant theory. For readers interested in twentieth-century
Mexican, or more generally, Latin American narrative and culture, the book provides a
useful approach to core works by an important intellectual figure.
Paul Fallon
Assistant Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
East Carolina University