Abstract

This paper provides a new reading of the title story of Juan Rulfo's 1953 collection of short stories El llano en llamas (The Burning Plain). Drawing on R.W. Connell's account of masculinities as specific and localised 'configurations of social practice', as well as accounts of 'feminist masculinity' and 'performativity' elaborated by bell hooks and Judith Butler respectively, the main argument is that gendered criticism of Latin American literary texts needs to move yet further from the stereotypical link between rationality and the construction of masculinities to explore the role that emotions play in the formation of masculine identities. To that end, as a basic exploration and illustration of the aforementioned premise, I employ the idea of 'patriarchal affect' (a concept I have coined recently in an article on Azuela's Los de abajo*) to bring into relief the representation of male revolutionaries in Rulfo's 'El llano en llamas'. The primary catalyst for the revolutionary violence depicted in this narrative is thus shown to be neither an attempt to reinforce a very obviously patriarchal form of hegemonic masculinity, nor a subaltern desire for power in the face of regime change in Mexico, but rather a quest for patriarchal affect that is closer to irrationality than to its opposite. More precisely, Pedro Zamora and the first-person narrator Pichón are shown to be motivated, in the main, not by a stereotypical desire to be perceived as exemplary machos by others, nor indeed by a political will to gain power in their region of Mexico, but rather by an irrepressible desire to feel powerful. In turn, that raises further questions about the nature of such desire and its cultural transmission.

* Masculinities and Violence in Latin American Cultures is a special edition of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, co-edited with Dr A. Thakkar (Lancaster University, UK), now in press and scheduled to appear in September 2010.