Engaging existentialism: transformative possibilities and local agendas -- The Mexican existentialist ethos -- The seminal Mexican existentialism of Rodolfo Usigli's theater -- Excavating Comala: the existentialist Juan Rulfo, the Grupo Hiperión, and lo mexicano in Pedro Páramo -- "Christs for all passions": José Revuelta's El luto humano [Human mourning] -- Rosario Castellanos's freedom.

The starting point for any understanding of Jean Baudrillard's media theory is his concept of `communication'. This is heavily indebted to his theory of symbolic exchange, drawn from the Durkheimian tradition running through Durkheim, Mauss, Caillois and Bataille. Common to all these authors is s specific view of human relations, derived from their anthropology, as involving both a communication and a confrontation. Baudrillard, therefore, sees the modern semiotic order as based on the destruction of these symbolic relations, and its media (...) accordingly as founded on a `non-communication'. In symbolic exchange, however, Baudrillard presents a complete and coherent theory of power, and his theory of communication illustrates the possibilities of transformation and reversal of established power and the system of non-communication which the reinstitution of symbolic relations can bring about. (shrink)