Emilio Rabasa, narrator. The Emergence of the 'People' in the Narrative Representation of Mexico’s Social Order

Abstract

This article studies the keys of symbolic representation of the social order of Mexico that the writer and jurist Emilio Rabasa Estebanell constructed by means of the codes of literary narrative. This concern completely overflowed the domain of specifically legal, parliamentary, and journalistic writings. In this sense, in this work the novel is considered to be part of a complex atmosphere of writings, speeches, debates, and symbolic representations, beyond which it can not be fully interpreted. In support of the legal (rational, universal, abstract) constitution of the Mexican nation, Emilio Rabasa constantly referred to the intellectual instruments and procedures of narrativity in order to reduce a problematic reality —sometimes chaotic with respect to the liberal mentality’s certainties and ideals— in the proper sense of the instruments and resources belonging to the literate order. This writing emphasizes an eagerness to describe, explain and, ultimately, understand, from the enunciation horizon of liberalism, the powerful popular traditions of Mexico. As a result, Rabasa came to narratively pose the emergence of the people as a social actor that would change Mexico’s symbolic order, as it was established by the discourses of political modernity. This process is studied in La Guerra de Tres Años (1891).

Keywords

• Emilio Rabasa
• narrativa mexicana
• realismo literario
• novela corta
• liberalismo mexicano