Políticas de lo fantástico: compromiso intelectual y olvido en dos cuentos de José Emilio Pacheco

Recent criticism on the fantastic highlights the transgressive and subversive nature of this narrative mode for its questioning of social and cultural values by playing with the limits between the real and the unreal. Many Latin American writers have made use of the fantastic as a metaphorical device to challenge the social and political reality of their continent or their particular countries. José Emilio Pacheco is a paradigmatic case in Mexico. In many of his short stories Pacheco presents a mutual challenging of the real natural and the unreal supernatural with the purpose of questioning dominant socio-political values. Both ‘Langerhaus’ and ‘La fiesta brava’ explore social and political issues in order to question the power structures and ideological values that shape Mexican reality. In this sense, the fantastic in these short stories, far from being an inoffensive form of escapism, takes on an overtly political orientation.