El Asesinato Como Un Arte (pos)nacional En El Mexico Moderno

This dissertation examines five novels and three films inscribed in or related to the Mexican detective genre and centered on death and nationalism: Ensayo de un crimen (1944) by Rodolfo Usigli, El hombre sin rostro (1950) by Juan Bustillo Oro, Ensayo de un crimen (1955) by Luis Buhuel, El complot mongol (1969) by Rafael Bernal, Cosa facil (1977) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, La cabeza de la hidra (1978) by Carlos Fuentes, Un asesino solitario (1999) by Elmer Mendoza, and Amores perros (2000) by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Working largely within a cultural studies paradigm, this dissertation proposes an overview of the post-revolutionary Mexican identity, the relationship of the modern State to this grand narrative, and the modes of representation used to create and revise the idea of nation. This work fundamentally analyses the relationship between the Mexican nation and industrial and urban modernity in the period after 1940, arguing that the Mexican detective genre simultaneously allegorizes and criticizes the assimilation of Mexico into modernity.