3 - Centrifugal Irony and ‘La Unidad Nacional’

Summary

My main concern thus far has been centripetal irony in Rulfo's work. In this chapter, and in the chapters that follow, the focus will shift towards centrifugal irony and the revolutionary rhetoric which is its target. This rhetoric has at least been referred to within the two stories discussed so far (‘Nos han dado la tierra’ and ‘El día del derrumbe’). But, if we are to examine Rulfo's complex deployment of irony even more closely, a much deeper understanding of this referent (in the form of post-Revolutionary speeches, posters, murals, textbooks etc.) is crucial. An appraisal of Mexican revolutionary rhetoric which has been particularly helpful to me is that provided by Edwin Williamson:

In effect, appeals to the spirit of the Revolution could function as a transcendent sanction for political power … The state thereby acquired a mystique which the illiterate multitudes found easier to sympathize with than such bloodless liberal abstractions as ‘the sovereignty of the people’.

Of the various aspects of this ‘transcendent sanction for political power’, I would like to start with the most obvious: nationalism. In this chapter, I shall examine the ways in which Rulfo's fiction ironises campaigns for national unity in the rhetoric of the post-Revolutionary government (1920–55).