Heterotopic Enclosures: Mexican National Spaces in Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo

Abstract

This article analyses the subversive depiction of Mexican ‘national spaces’, such as homes, churches, and cemeteries, in Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador (1962) and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955). Although both of these artists have been studied in considerable depth, a detailed comparison of their works remains to be carried out, particularly with respect to their innovative approach to spatiality. Both Buñuel’s film and Rulfo’s novel feature key physical and conceptual spaces which enclose and imprison their characters and I seek to link this sense of entrapment to a critique of nationalist cultural hegemony. The analysis will be carried out by applying Foucault’s (1986) concept of the heterotopia along with Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of ‘national space’. This new research will contribute towards a deeper understanding of spatiality in mid-twentieth century Mexican Modernism and a greater awareness of the myriad links between these two experimental artists.