Political mysteries: The limits of hegemony in twentieth-century Mexican, Argentine, and Cuban literature

In this dissertation, I look at a series of well-known novels and short stories as allegorical treatments of the nation. My readings explore the intersections between literary production and political conflict from the second half of the twentieth century to the present in Latin America, with a specific focus on the ways in which the literary staging of an enigma or crime in mystery or detective fiction parallels a broader societal search to establish an optimal political order or narrate a national crisis. To that end, I examine three case studies of disintegrating national hegemonic movements: the PRI in Mexico, Peronism in Argentina, and the Cuban Revolutionary government. As mid-century Latin American national-popular political movements enter into crisis and give way to the logic of neoliberalism, there is an increasing tendency for a detective-esque modality to assert itself in narrative works, including works that do not fit within the specific conventions of the detective genre. These literary mysteries reflect and stage a crisis in political organization that is precipitated by the collapse of populist hegemony across the region. In the wake of this collapse, I argue that analyzing cultural production through the prism of a detective-esque modality sheds light on crimes that upset the balance of a potentially just society. Through a transformative use of Ernesto Laclau's concept of heterogeneity, I map the fissures that threaten to erase marginalized subjectivities, and in the process propose a specific usage of hegemony theory that untangles the complex web of culture and politics while simultaneously taking into account hegemony's own limitations. It is my hope that this project will open new avenues of thought concerning a more nuanced view of hegemony theory as well as provide new road maps for understanding the workings of politics and cultural production in our globalized world.