University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons CUREJ - College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal College of Arts and Sciences 2018 From the Table of my Memory: Identity, Political Change, and Shakespeare in Mexico and Argentina Helena von Nagy
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/curej Part of the Comparative Politics Commons, International Relations Commons, Latin American Studies Commons, and the Political Theory Commons Recommended Citation von Nagy, Helena, "From the Table of my Memory: Identity, Political Change, and Shakespeare in Mexico and Argentina" 01 January 2018. CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania, https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/216. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/216 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. From the Table of my Memory: Identity, Political Change, and Shakespeare in Mexico and Argentina Abstract In Mexico and Argentina, the localization of Shakespeare marks the crystallization of a new nationalist, political identity rooted in a reshaped collective memory. The development of this identity and the role of memory form a new kind of national citizenship. This group citizenship gives an individual a connection to a nation established around the collective memory of events, or what I term the memory-nation. The localization of Shakespeare, then, marks the complete formation of a citizenship in a new memory-nation. In Mexico, the localization of Shakespeare and its use in cinema was part of a larger process of defining post-Revolutionary Mexican political identity rooted in an appreciation for lo mexicano (or all things mexican, from cultural products to people to the landscape) and the egalitarian project of the Revolution.