This essay reflects on how literature and architecture confronted the question of autonomy in post-revolutionary Mexico, that is, how literature and architecture modeled for themselves, in theory and practice, their own independence from society. The post-revolutionary decades witnessed remarkable transformations linked to a variety of modern processes, which inevitably led Mexican artists and intellectuals to reflect on the social character of art and to pay particular attention to the increasing self-awareness with which artworks negotiated their ideological determinations. I suggest an approximation to this problem through the language of reedification, which maintained prevalence as a master trope during the post-revolutionary decades and articulated the symbolic, political, and material dimensions of the struggle to reconcile aesthetic and revolutionary incumbencies.

FORMA: A Journal of Latin American Criticism and Theory, vol. 3, no. 2, 2024, pp. 37-58