Cracks as Portals of Change: A Reading of Disasters in Juan Villoro’s Novel Materia dispuesta (1997)

This analysis argues that concepts of nation and masculinity are necessarily reformulated because natural disasters are portrayed as symbolic ruptures that can enable either a social transformation or the reaffirmation of the status quo. When a return to the status quo occurs, hegemonic Mexican masculine models are portrayed as barriers to meaningful social change. This argument draws from Sedgwick (1985), Bartra (1987), Connell ([2005]1993), Gutman ([1996] 2006) and Irwin (2003) to expand the analysis of monolithic masculinities as obstacles to overcoming disaster through close reading of how the novel’s protagonist Mauricio navigates disaster and concludes that hegemonic narratives of masculinity become fatal to healing a nation amidst calamity because those discourses/performances truncate a praxis of solidarity.