A Mestizo of the Mind: Maodun in the Writings of Octavio Paz

Abstract

In his Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz describes pachuco as word of uncertain derivation, nothing and everything. It is a strange word with no definite meaning; or, to be more exact, is charged like all popular creations with a diversity of meanings (Labyrinth 14). Paz tells us, lost his whole inheritance: language, religion, customs, beliefs. He is left with only a body and a soul with which to confront elements, defenseless against stares of everyone. His disguise is a protection, but also differentiates and isolates him: hides him and points him out (15). The logic of saying nothing and everything, and of pachuco's disguise that both hides him and points him out is precisely logic of non-contradictory opposites, logic of maodun. Another example of maodun, ontological as well as epistemological, is Paz's analysis of pachuco fashion: pachuco carries fashion to its ultimate consequences and turns into something aesthetic. One of principles that rules in North American fashions is that clothing must be comfortable, and pachuco, by changing ordinary apparel into art, makes 'impractical.' Hence negates very principles of model that inspired it (15). Negating very principle of its inspiration involves irony of self-contradiction, or maodun. This co-efficient of self-contradiction, which logic persuades us is not possible--that one is and is not at same time refers to a pervasive phenomena in life and in human nature. Maodun involves self-contradiction. It entails two opposite yet complementary, rather than mutually exclusive, categories. In a paper presented in 2000, and published in 2002,2 I wrote that Contemporary China illustrates neither modernism nor postmodernism, but rather a maodun-ism far more fascinating (and original) than cultured pearls that are being so assiduously cultivated in chimerical fever of post-modernism. (Eoyang, A Cross-Cultural Perspective 131) In another paper I have developed notion of maodun or maodunism not as contradiction, as is usually rendered, but as and as a contradictory unity. (3) I suggested that the study of postmodernism is now, seems to me, an exhausted endeavor; analyses of post-modernism have also become stale and arid. What I would like to see is start of a much more fecund and fascinating field: study of maodunism! (Eoyang, Of 'Invincible Spears' 57). This paper provides a study of maodunism in Octavio Paz, Mexican writer who won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. It traces suprarational truth that unifies paradoxical (Bertens 36 [quoting Wasson]). It is belief that reconcilable rather than irreconcilable opposites prevail in world that marks modern maodunist. One of implications that study of maodunists among modern or postmodern writers might provoke would entail a revamping of traditional notions of what is real in life; that, contrary to empiricists--logical or pragmatic--the essence of life is precisely illogical, or, more familiarly, psychological and human. What I propose to illustrate in this paper is homology between, on one hand, an ontology of maodun, manifest in concepts of hybridity, racial mixing, and dual identities, and, on other, an epistemology of maodun, reflected in cast of mind that entertains non-contradictory opposites, complementary dualities, and dialectical harmonies. I will elide considerable commentary on from scholars like Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy, in favor of Paz's own reminders that tradition of mestizo is long standing, and dates from centuries before Conquistadors. Indeed, as Michael Palencia-Roth has stated, hybridity or mestizaje has been part of Latin American reality since about 1496, when Spanish crown advocated as part of colonizing process. …