Consuming Bodies: Countercultural Citizens of Mexican Capitalism in the 20th Century

This dissertation engages the process of nation-building in the wake and institutionalization of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). In the dissertation, cultural products ranging from popular songs, canonical novels, marginal films and theatre are studied in order to trace the development of countercultural citizens who mobilize their bodies as sites of resistance to the hegemonic processes of socialization generated by the Mexican State. By focusing on the interconnections between the development of capitalism and the expansion of markets and state nationalism during the post-revolutionary period (1920-199), this dissertation gathers a series of what is theorize as countercultural bodies that generate alternative representations and definitions of nationalism. In doing so, this project redefines counterculture in relation to national and cultural socialization processes and resists a purely sociological or historical approach. In other words, in theorizing why the act of consuming a hallucinogenic substance, listening to rock music or engaging in non-heteronormative sexual practices become countercultural acts, and not simply registering them as such connected in a global phenomenon, this project engages the construction of Mexico as a mestizo nation during postrevolutionary times through tracing how habits of consumption generate spaces of community where marginalized and outrightly rejected bodies come together. Each chapter engages a specific moment in national history when citizens contingently negotiate the formation of a proto-civil society in relation to the hegemonic socialization processes that enforce models of national behavior limited by ethnic, linguistic, gender and sexuality norms. With the particular model of countercultural body, this dissertation traces how these Mexican bodies generate alternative forms of consumer socialization, citizenship, nationalism and political action that run against State controlled platforms and cultural spheres. In doing so, this project assembles an-other cultural history of 20th century Mexico, one that allows for an understanding of the appearance of civil society and personal politics in the late 1980s and 1990s