‘Te conozco de cuando eras árbol’: Gender, Utopianism, and the Border in Cristina Rivera Garza's La cresta de Ilión

Abstract

La cresta de Ilión (2002) by Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico, 1964) suggests a utopian project that employs gender to confront homogenizing forces. Judith Butler's and Lucy Sargisson's theories on gender and utopianism inform this reading of the novel as it relates to new forms of utopia as an alternative to patriarchal order. La cresta de Ilión, which takes place along a blurry U.S./Mexico border, creates a utopian space where marginal figures move freely across both national and gender divides. Certain aspects of this text characterize it as a gender utopia: fluid identitary praxes that reject fixed notions of identity; an exploration of adjacencies of the masculine and the feminine; and the development of alternative language and power structures that deconstruct patriarchal notions and traditional national identities. This text suggests a broader project for reconfiguring geographic and cultural boundaries in a way that would permit a utopia of gender.