Despite extended periods of political continuity, Mexico has traditionally been imagined as a space of instability. Mexican philosophers, poets, scholars, and statesmen have long reflected on the idea of Mexico as potential not yet realized, at once utopian and dystopian, an identity always in formation. The ambivalence of this cultural energy is intensified in the US context, where Mexico functions as a key referent in an astounding variety of culture wars.
In the terms of these debates, and all of the fear and desire that they imply, “Mexico,” the geopolitical space, becomes “Mexicanization,” a geocultural process of transformation: a potentially disruptive force that can weigh against an imagined purity of an exceptional American identity, or stand as a source of creative and economic renewal. What is the history of the idea of Mexico? “Becoming Mexico” reflects on this question through an interdisciplinary symposium featuring four speakers:
• Abraham Acosta (Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona).
• Maria del Pilar Blanco (Lecturer in Latin American Literature and Culture, Spanish and Latin American Studies, University College London, University of Oxford)
• Gregory Downs (Associate Professor, Department of History, The City College of New York, CUNY).
• Nicole Guidotti-Hernández (Associate Professor, Department of American Studies, and Associate Director, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin)