Summary of Susan Antebi's Embodied Archive

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The author’s personal and professional journey leads him to Urzaiz’s Eugenia, and the eugenic project of early twentieth-century Mérida. While focused on a particular writer and his work, the reading explodes outward to take on not only the question of historical context, but the far-reaching resonance of disability and eugenic discourse across time and space.

#2 The scene in question is striking for its brief but vivid physical descriptions of the characters involved, specifically the Africans, the physician, and the young Ernesto. While the history of eugenics is a history of racism, within the novel itself, eugenics functions to erase negatively perceived physical and psychological conditions.

#3 The novel centers around the story of Ernesto, a young and physically ideal male, and his older, intellectually gifted partner and former teacher, Celiana. Toward the beginning of the novel, Ernesto, thanks to his physical endowments, is selected by the state to be an official reproducer of the species.

#4 Eugenics and the romantic plot work in tandem with a political backdrop in which Mexico is on the brink of a potential trade war with Cuba, due to disagreements regarding the price of sugar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669349501

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Susan Antebi's Embodied Archive

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The author’s personal and professional journey leads him to Urzaiz’s Eugenia, and the eugenic project of early twentieth-century Mérida. While focused on a particular writer and his work, the reading explodes outward to take on not only the question of historical context, but the far-reaching resonance of disability and eugenic discourse across time and space.

#2

The scene in question is striking for its brief but vivid physical descriptions of the characters involved, specifically the Africans, the physician, and the young Ernesto. While the history of eugenics is a history of racism, within the novel itself, eugenics functions to erase negatively perceived physical and psychological conditions.

#3

The novel centers around the story of Ernesto, a young and physically ideal male, and his older, intellectually gifted partner and former teacher, Celiana. Toward the beginning of the novel, Ernesto, thanks to his physical endowments, is selected by the state to be an official reproducer of the species.

#4

Eugenics and the romantic plot work in tandem with a political backdrop in which Mexico is on the brink of a potential trade war with Cuba, due to disagreements regarding the price of sugar.

#5

The novel deals with the question of how to deal with the undesirable effects of human disqualification, and the novel’s aesthetics and ambivalence regarding human embodiment contribute to this question.

#6

The eugenic project seeks to erase certain traits in people, such as madness. But as Dr. Urzaiz points out, the very concepts of sane and insane are relative, since they depend on which side of the fence the one who judges or classifies them is standing.

#7

The novel suggests an aesthetic paradox by combining this projected erasure with the detailed inclusion of imperfect characters. The female protagonist, Celiana, writes about the decadent aesthetics of two or three centuries past, but describes herself and her body as characters in decadence.

#8

The lines used by Celiana to describe the aesthetics of a prior age are a clue to the novel’s place in relation to Urzaiz’s thinking, and to the larger trajectory of his professional development. In 1902, Urzaiz presented his undergraduate thesis to the Facultad de Medicina y Cirurgía de Yucatán, with the title El desequilibrio mental.

#9

The aesthetic problem exists in