Memorializing monuments: State space and state rollback under neo-liberalization in Mexico | Intellect Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Art & the Public Sphere
  4. Volume 10, Issue 2
  5. Article
Politicizing Artistic Pedagogies: Publics, Spaces, Teachings
  • ISSN: 2042-793X
  • E-ISSN: 2042-7948

Abstract

Recent contributions to urban geography have considered state space by innovatively focusing on specific cases of the city built environment. Examples could include here Karl Schlögel’s slicing through the spaces of state power in or Yuri Slezkine’s methodological cue to read the saga of the Russian Revolution across time in . This article adds to the methodological insights of urban researchers by honing in on the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, in order to consider its role as a socially produced, conflictual and dynamically changing site in the struggle over public space and its memorialization. Since its opening in 1938, the Monument to the Revolution at Plaza de la República has been a pivotal fulcrum of state power in abetting the changing geography of state space. Equally, the site has experienced contradictions and differences stemming from socially produced space across time, in the form of periods of state crisis and, most recently, state ‘rollback’ and ‘rollout’ under neo-liberalization. This article addresses both neo-liberalizing and differential as they bear on the space at the Monument to the Revolution. It does so by situating the Monument to the Revolution within the urban question and how neo-liberalization has unlocked local and aesthetic meanings that have become commodified, not least through the extraction of monopoly rents. Further, the article spotlights simultaneous contemporary contestations of state power and impulses of socio-spatial struggle over difference articulated in and around Plaza de la República at the monument. In so doing, the article contributes an important pedagogical focus on homogenizing differential structures of feeling inscribed in spaces of capitalism in the twenty-first century.

© 2021 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/aps_00059_1
2021-11-01
2024-05-03
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adler, D.. ( 2017;), ‘ The fragmented city: Mexico City and the Right to the City Charter. ’, in Verso Books (ed.), The Right to the City: A Verso Report, London:: Verso;, pp. 79–87.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Benjamin, T.. ( 2000), La Revolución: Mexico’s Great Revolution as Memory, Myth and History, Austin, TX:: University of Texas Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Benjamin, W.. ( 1999), The Arcades Project (trans. H. Eiland, and K. McLaughlin.), Cambridge, MA:: Belknap Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Benjamin, W.. ( [1935] 2006;), ‘ Paris, the capital of the nineteenth century. ’, in H. Eiland, and M. W. Jennings. (eds), Selected Essays, 1935–1938, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA:: Belknap Press;, pp. 32–49.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Benjamin, W.. ( [1936] 2006;), ‘ The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility: Second version. ’, in H. Eiland, and M. W. Jennings., Selected Writings, 1935–1938, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA:: Belknap Press;, pp. 101–33.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Benjamin, W.. ( [1940] 2006a;), ‘ On the concept of history. ’, in H. Eiland, and M. W. Jennings. (eds), Selected Writings, 1938–1940, vol. 4, Cambridge, MA:: Belknap Press;, pp. 389–400.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Benjamin, W.. ( [1940] 2006b;), ‘ Paralipomena to “On the concept of history”. ’, in H. Eiland, and M. W. Jennings. (eds), Selected Writings, 1938–1940, vol. 4, Cambridge, MA:: Belknap Press;, pp. 401–11.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bialostozky, H.. ( 2018;), ‘ “Little LA” o el barrio de los repatriados: de Estados Unidos a la Tabacalera. ’, Local.MX , 28 August, https://local.mx/atlas/zona-4/tabacalera/little-la/. Accessed 20 November 2018.
  9. El Universal ( 2017;), ‘ Reabre sus puertas el Frontón México. ’, 11 March, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/metropoli/cdmx/2017/03/11/fronton-mexico-va-detonar-la-economia#imagen-1. Accessed 20 November 2018.
  10. El Universal ( 2019;), ‘ Marcha contra AMLO llega al Monumento a la Revolución. ’, 5 May, https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/politica/marcha-contra-amlo-llega-al-monumento-la-revolucion. Accessed 20 November 2019.
  11. Gilly, A.. ( 2006), Historia a contrapelo, México:: Ediciones Era;.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Harvey, D.. ( 1996), Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Oxford:: Blackwell;.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Harvey, D.. ( [1973] 2009), Social Justice and the City, , rev ed.., Athens, GA:: University of Georgia Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Harvey, D.. ( 2012), Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, London:: Verso;.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Jameson, F.. ( 1982;), ‘ Architecture and the critique of ideology. ’, in K. M. Hays. (ed.), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, MA:: MIT Press;, pp. 440–61.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Jenss, A.. ( 2019;), ‘ Authoritarian neoliberal rescaling in Latin America: Urban in/security and austerity in Oaxaca. ’, Globalizations, 16:3, pp. 304–19.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Lefebvre, H.. ( [1974] 1991), The Production of Space (trans. D. Nicholson-Smith.), Oxford:: Blackwell;.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Lefebvre, H.. ( [1978] 2009;), ‘ Space and the state. ’, in N. Brenner, and S. Elden. (eds), State, Space, World: Selected Essays (trans. G. Moore,, N. Brenner, and S. Elden.), Minneapolis, MA:: University of Minnesota Press;, pp. 223–53.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Lefebvre, H.. ( [1979] 2009;), ‘ Space: Social product and use value. ’, in N. Brenner, and S. Elden. (eds), State, Space, World: Selected Essays (trans. G. Moore,, N. Brenner, and S. Elden.), Minneapolis, MA:: University of Minnesota Press;, pp. 185–95.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Lefebvre, H.. ( [1973] 2014), Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment (ed. Ł. Stanek., trans. R. Bononno.), Minneapolis, MA:: University of Minnesota Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Lefebvre, H.. ( [1972] 2016), Marxist Thought and the City (trans. R. Bononno.), Minneapolis, MA:: University of Minnesota Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Löwy, M.. ( 2005), Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’ (trans. C. Turner.), London:: Verso;.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Macherey, P.. ( [1966] 1978), A Theory of Literary Production (trans. G. Wall.), London:: Routledge;.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Massey, D.. ( 1995), Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production, , 2nd ed.., London:: Palgrave;.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Massey, D.. ( 2005), For Space, London:: Sage;.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Milenio ( 2018;), ‘ La pista de hielo se muda del Zócalo al Monumento a la Revolución. ’, 18 November, https://www.milenio.com/cultura/pista-hielo-deja-zocalo-llega-monumento-revolucion?image=1. Accessed 20 November 2018.
  27. Morton, A. D.. ( [2011] 2013), Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development, , updated paperback ed.., Lanham, MA:: Rowman & Littlefield;.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Morton, A. D.. ( 2017;), ‘ Spatial political economy. ’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, 79, pp. 21–38.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Morton, A. D.. ( 2018;), ‘ The architecture of “passive revolution”: Society, state and space in Mexico. ’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 50:1, pp. 117–52.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Peck, J.. ( 2010), Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, Oxford:: Oxford University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Schlögel, K.. ( 2012), Moscow 1937 (trans. R. Livingstone.), Cambridge, MA:: Polity;.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Sklair, L.. ( 2006;), ‘ Iconic architecture and capitalist globalisation. ’, City, 10:1, pp. 21–47.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Slezkine, Y.. ( 2017), The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, Princeton, NJ:: Princeton University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Smith, N.. ( 1996), The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, London:: Routledge;.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Stanek, Ł.. ( 2011), Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory, Minneapolis, MA:: University of Minnesota Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Villalobos, J. P.. ( 2014), Te vendo un perro, Barcelona:: Editorial Anagrama;.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Villoro, J.. ( 2018), El vértigo horizontal: Una ciudad llamada México, México:: Almadía Ediciones;.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Williams, R.. ( [1973] 2016), The Country and the City, London:: Vintage;.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Morton, Adam David. ( 2021;), ‘ Memorializing monuments: State space and state rollback under neo-liberalization in Mexico. ’, Art & the Public Sphere, 10:2, pp. 195–209, https://doi.org/10.1386/aps_00059_1
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/aps_00059_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): Henri Lefebvre; Mexico; Monument to the Revolution; space; structures of feeling; Walter Benjamin

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error