Diluted backgrounds: Scientism and Literature in the Revista Moderna

Abstract

In the present contribution, I will show how the ideological relations of the founders of Revista Moderna (1898-1903) with the group of scientists close to the Porifirian government, and in general, with the positivist discourse, was used by the magazine’s creators in order to advance their positions. In this sense, the founder’s discourse had the objective of legitimizing their struggles for the dominance of Mexico’s literary and cultural powers. The irruption of a second modernist generation —that by the self-termed decadents— in Mexico’s literary scene at the end of the 19th century, brought with it heated discussions which confronted the young writers associated to such aesthetics tendencies against the defenders of a traditionalist nationalism, which was still in vogue in those decades. After several years of disputes captured in the pages of Revista Moderna, the magazine’s editors made use of their relations with the scientific spheres, not just to make counterpoints to their adversaries’ arguments and “nationalize” modernism, but also, to turn their journal into one of the main voices of their movement throughout the continent. The initial agreement with the scientist’s sector and with their discursive practices, however, generated significant tensions which, finally, were resolved in favor of a literary supremacy.