Figuras y geopolíticas del ruido y de la escucha: En tierra yankee (1895) de Justo Sierra

Abstract

Abstract: The travel chronicles En tierra yankee (Notas a todo vapor) (1895) by Porfirian intellectual Justo Sierra Méndez lead us to reflect on the ways in which they imagined the sonic and the audible in relation to changing urban spaces, the Mexico/United States border, and communication and transportation technologies such as the steam train in unequally modernized spaces. The narrator employs a terminology of musical composition and sound to indicate the emergence of an economic and industrial hegemony that reorganized the new noises that marked the modern rhythms of the first half of the twentieth century. Noise holds a prominent place in establishing and unveiling postcolonial and racist relations with the other (the Yankee , the Afro-descendant). The nature of the travel narrative as a genre was not limited to mobilizing bodies or goods but also encompassed aural sensitivities, enabling a reflection on the geopolitics of sound, and listening. At a time when ideas and discourses are developing about the need for a Latin Americanist front to counteract North American postcolonial impact, the problematization of Latinamericanism is manifested through noise according to Sierra.