Patterns of Place and Space in the Work of Juan Rulfo

This chapter expands Roland Barthes’s theory of studium and punctum outlined in Camera Lucida in an analysis of ‘Puerta del cementerio de Janitzio’. It argues centripetal ironies are insufficient to understand the centrifugal breadth of Rulfo’s deployment of irony in his fictional work. The chapter argues that, just as Esteban’s commitment to his hen acts as a situational ironizing of the government’s disparaging attitude towards the peasantry, the girl’s commitment to the boy can be read as a situational commentary on the government’s attitude towards Janitzio. It demonstrates that Rulfo’s ‘Puerta del cementerio’ can be read as a Mexican rural scene but that this studium-based interpretation is highly limited. The remoteness of indigenous communities from the metropolitan discourse of national unity is a common theme and not only in Rulfo’s fiction. The paradoxical connection between remoteness and threshold is also present in Rulfo’s photography.