Beyond Modernity: Irony, Fantasy, and the Challenge to Grand Narratives in Subcomandante Marcos's Tales

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Modernity has long been under attack: eminent scholars, including Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, have engaged in intense critiques involving the dominance of ideology, the use of language, and the role of reason in modernity. Heavily critical of vanguards and "armchair revolutionaries,"Subcomandante Marcos challenges the necessity for a grand narrative and a mighty narrator. But although he has been relatively successful in challenging the conventional approach to politics, his discourse reveals that he does not, indeed could not, completely escape the grand narrative and the individualism that, for so long, have characterized Western thought.Hace tiempo que la modernidad se encuentra bajo ataque: importantes estudiosos, entre ellos Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard y Foucault, han hecho críticas severas en torno al predominio de la ideología, el uso del lenguaje y el papel de la razón en la modernidad. Muy crítico de las vanguardias y los "revolucionarios de sillón", el Subcomandante Marcos desafía la necesidad de grandes narrativas y de un narrador poderoso. Este artículo sostiene que, a pesar de que Marcos es relativamente original en su desafío al enfoque convencional de la política, su discurso demuestra que no escapa, o que no puede escapar totalmente, a las grandes narrativas y al individualismo que durante mucho tiempo han caracterizado el pensamiento político occidental.

Subcomandante Marcos: the latest reader

“…37 Bruhn's article posits that Marcos had been exposed to, and influenced by, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci; however, see Nick Henck (2013) who challenges this assertion. 38 On Marcos' use of irony, see: Juan Pellicer (1996:203-205) and(2001:117 &119-122), Laura Hernández Martínez (2002), Thomas Olesen (2007), and Daniela Di Piramo (2011). 39 Indeed, Marcos has frequently asserted that he first came to Chiapas as a classic Marxist guerrilla.…”

“…On Marcos’ use of irony, see: Juan Pellicer (:203–205) and (2001:117 & 119–122), Laura Hernández Martínez (), Thomas Olesen (), and Daniela Di Piramo ().…”

“…See too, Rebecca Solnit ([] 2006:36), who states that Marcos ‘is the composer of a new kind of political discourse,’ and Daniela di Piramo (:204), who claims that the Subcommander ‘understands that a new way of doing politics requires a new discursive approach.’…”