Pablo Zavala, "Forging a Mexican People: Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917-1968" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

About this episode

Dr. Pablo Zavala discusses his book on how print culture shaped collective identities in postrevolutionary Mexico.

Forging a Mexican People: Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917–1968 (University of Arizona Press, 2026) shows how illustrated print culture helped to construct and deconstruct versions of “a people” in postrevolutionary Mexico. Through meticulous research, Dr. Pablo Zavala uncovers the ways photographers, graphic artists, writers, and activists used print culture to challenge hegemonic conceptions of state-guided narratives and forge alternative collective subjectivities. This book offers a fresh perspective on the sociopolitical landscape of postrevolutionary Mexico, revealing how cultural artifacts simultaneously crafted and reflected the people vis-à-vis different political and social categories. By examining print culture, editorial practices, and related processes such as the creation, consumption, and distribution of said culture, Dr. Zavala’s research contributes to scholarship that has recently reexamined the construction of nationalism by moving away from the focus on state formation and addressing the horizontal and aesthetic dimensions in products by cultural producers from nonstate and grassroots political sectors. Dr. Zavala examines the…

People in this episode

Guest: Pablo Zavala

Topics covered

• postrevolutionary Mexico
• print culture
• nationalism
• cultural artifacts
• collective subjectivities
• sociopolitical landscape

Keywords

• print culture
• postrevolutionary Mexico
• nationalism
• cultural identity
• sociopolitical
• collective subjectivities
• archival research

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Arizona Press, Taller de Gráfica Popular, California’s Chicano farmworkers’ struggle

Books & works: Forging a Mexican People: Collective Subjectivities in Postrevolutionary Print Culture, 1917-1968, El Universal Ilustrado, El Machete

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