Antebi. A Tiger in The Tank

A TIGER IN THE TANK: A LITERARY GENETICS OF THE MEXICAN AXOLOTL
Author(s): SUSAN ANTEBI

Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 36, No. 71 (JANUARY - JUNE 2008), pp. 75-
98
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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A TIGER IN THE TANK: A LITERARY GENETICS
OF THE MEXICAN AXOLOTL
SUSAN ANTEBI
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
"Acerca de los ajolotes s?lo dispongo de dos infor

maciones dignas de confianza. Una: el autor de las
Cosas de la Nueva Espa?a; otra: la autora de mis
d?as" (374).
Juan Jos? Arre?la, Bestiario
The ajolote, axolotl, or axolotl,1 has been the source of inspira

tion for so many literary and critical texts of Latin American?and
Latin Americanist?origin, that one might question the purpose of
further insistence on this curious animal. If, as Arre?la notes?with a
wink? in his 1959 text, that he knows of no more than two reliable
"authors" on the subject, this hardly suggests a shortage of material.
Even Arreola's brief text is itself, ironically, saturated with refer
ences, some perhaps unabashedly fictional, but nonetheless effective
in amplifying the ajolote's allure and critical weight. This amphibian
serves as the principal focus for elaborations of Otherness and Latin
American identity (Kauffmann 2000; Levinson 2004) Derridean
arche-writing Ag?ero 1981) the role of Wittgenstein in Cort?zar and
Elizondo, (Gurrola 2004) and perhaps most memorably, mythologies
of Mexican national identity, in the case of Roger Bartra's 1987 clas
76 Latin American Literary Review
sic La jaula de la melancol?a. These are just a few of the ajolotesque

critical angles in circulation, not to mention the familiar references
to the ajolote as instance of the fantastic in narrative, particularly in
analyses of Cort?zar 's well known short story. The ajolote does not
die, but rather withstands even the most violent of critical rescucita
tions, true to its malleable nature?both on the page, and within the
aquarium. The reaction it provokes might be ambivalent, between
horror and fascination, curiosity and disgust, but inevitably compel
ling its interlocutor to say, or to write, something more.
The notion of transformation or metamorphosis in the ajolote
represents the most significant source of enthusiasm that the species
has generated, both amongst literary critics, and in the scientific com
munity. Yet it is at once the question of transformation that points
to the origin of erroneous readings and interpretations, even, in fact,
when "errors" are made on purpose. In this essay I read the figure of
the ajolote/sxoXotX through the confluences of scientific and literary
discourses, focusing my analysis primarily on Salvador Elizondo's
text "Ambystoma Trigrinum," from his 1972 book El graf?grafo,
and on Elizondo's references to particular facts from the history of
science. Error, or disimulation, in my reading, is intimately linked to
the problem of metamorphosis in the ajolote, and points to a rupture
between appearance and "truth," or between one appearance and a
differing one that follows upon it, in an ongoing series of disabusing
revelations. It is on one hand a structure that reflects the dilemma of
the graf?grafo, who affirms at the beginning of the book of the same
title, "Escribo. Escribo que escribo." in other words it follows the
model of an unresolved, or floating opposition between grapheme
and referent, in the "graphocentric" text.2 On the other hand, the
notion of error here also indicates a far simpler opposition, between
the certainty of scientific proof, and science's frequent or occasional
mistakes. This second opposition typically leaves no room for games,
and follows from a discourse that obliges the scientist to prove his or
her results while at once denying and disproving prior analyses and
concepts that do not support the hypothesis and experiment currently
in question. Particular facts from the history of science provide
A Literary Genetics of the Mexican Axolotl 77
Elizondo's text with an anchor in empiricism, one which interrupts

the writerly graphocentric flow, thus suggesting that the violence
of writing does in fact go beyond the traces from the page, or from
the inside of the fishtank. Yet the graphocentric construction of the
ajolote also contributes, in turn, to a transformation in meaning of
the animal's scientific history, and its status as object of research. In
addition, the roles of the ax?lotl and of the God X?lotl from N?huatl
mythology also participate in this analysis, and enter?however
obliquely?in the same structure that unites the "scientific" and the
"literary" axolotls.
In his reading of the "axolote" as ambivalent figure of Mexican
identity and consciousness, Bartra describes an opposition between
the opaque mask of nationalistic discourse, and a radical, dissident
"reality," which in turn becomes another myth, or mask: "As?, dos
melod?as diferentes trenzaron en la interminable fuga del axolote.
Una melod?a cant? las glorias del axolote como una expresi?n de la
vida. Pero un contratema nos record?, al mismo tiempo, que el anfibio
hab?a sido condenado a ser s?mbolo, signo y m?scara: qued? atrapado
para siempre en la jaula de la melancol?a" (203). Metamorphosis
here suggests the free fluidity of historical reality, while neotenia,
defined as the absence of metamorphosis combined with reproduction
in larval form, or as the display of juvenile traits in adult individuals,
corresponds to the rigidity of the "symbol, sign and mask."3 In my
reading, however, the literary play of signs appears to offer fluidity, in
contrast to scientific discourse's seemingly more fixed insistence on
taxonomical differences between species and developmental stages.
Yet overlaps between these discourses accrue around the problem of
error or uncertainty in representations of the axolotl, suggesting that
even differences between the fluid and the fixed are not necessarily
what they would seem. The intersection of literary and scientific ap
proaches in this analysis allows for an emergent axolotl model, so
that the reader will not have to choose between the amphibian and the
text that appears to frame it, or between a literary cultural metaphor
and a science that would supposedly bind it to an unquestionable
genetic coding. This strategy, I maintain, may be the axolotl's?or the
reader's?best defense against both the horrors of laboratory science,

and the more slippery violence of literary representation.
The ambivalence of this violence is at once intrinsic to the par
ticular condition of the axolotl as figure of Latin American cultural
identity, suspended between Paris and Mexico, for example, or more
generally between Latin America and its colonizing Others.4 By
situating this Latin American / Latinamericanist axolotl in a frame
work informed by the history of science, as well as by the literary
gesture of graphocentrism, I wish to emphasize the specific cultural
trajectories and geopolitics underpinning the axolotl metaphor. Thus,
it is hardly a coincidence that the first scientific experiments on the
Mexican axolotl are conducted in France, during the French occupa
tion of Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. And the graphocentric
emphasis in Elizondo's text links his work to that of Severo Sarduy,
in turn influenced by a French critical tradition centered upon figures
such as Bataille, Barthes, Derrida and other contributors to the journal
Tel Quel. If these transatlantic histories suggest the inseparability
of the Latin American axolotl from its external points of reference,
they at once point to a blurred division between the axolotl as cul
tural metaphor, and the specificity of the amphibian's evolution as
scientific and literary object. Thus the partial collapsing together of
amphibian and text, or of scientific proof and literary play, as I will
describe here, has everything to do with the vexed positionality of
the axolotl as Latin American discursive site.
The playful, oscillating dynamic at work in the reading of a
graphocentric axolotl metamorphosis suggests Sarduy's concept of
the Baroque as radically destabilizing force. The body of Elizondo's
axolotl is a site of transformation and a metaphor for writing. Simi
larly, Sarduy's Baroque body offers itself as endless surface, a mask
which "enmascara que es una m?scara" (1151). This concept of the
Baroque has frequently been conceived in subversive terms, as a Latin
American expression of ornamentation, dissimulation and complex
cultural metamorphosis vis ? vis European expansionism. Yet as John
Ochoa has argued, Sarduy's Baroque and Neobaroque renovations of
language and aesthetics run the risk of ultimately falling into the para
dox of a "stable instability" (157). "Sarduy, much as he aestheticizes

the body, aestheticizes the concept of revolution, abstracting it away
from a specific context" (155). Elizondo's axolotl runs a similar risk,
by suspending the animal referent and its history via the violence of
a purely graphocentric writing, as pretext for self-reflexive textual
pleasure. It is for this reason that the juxtaposition of literary and sci
entific histories will be especially crucial here. Although this strategy
cannot fully overcome the violently graphocentric suspension of the
axolotl as referent, and the uncertainly situated discursive position it
suggests, the mutual grounding between these histories shifts their
focus towards more specific contextualization. Thus an international
history of axolotl taxonomy shadows the vicissitudes of a Latin
American Baroque graphocentrism, revealing material underpinnings
to its seemingly ephemeral lines of flight. Similarly, this transatlantic
graphocentric trace invades the scientist's aquarium, and disturbs the
taxonomy of the species he wishes to observe and control.
It is common critical practice to frame instances of the literary
fantastic according to the internal structure of the text; here, however,
the intertextuality of Elizondo's work, and the ajolote's insistence on
leaving its text, or its tank, allows for a reading that focuses on the
interstices of several texts and histories, even those operating between
the space of fiction and what is sometimes viewed as the empirical
truth of the world of science. The idea of leaving the text, or passing
between texts, has been proposed in some cases as a gesture that does
not permit an escape into the "real" world, but nonetheless indicates a
position of insistence on the act of reading itself, and on the importance
of re-reading a given text.5 This gesture also suggests the impulse
towards an ethics of reading, one which in this case would focus on
the problem of the representation and categorization of the body of
the ajolote. Such an ethics undoubtedly will always run the risk of
sliding towards a "metaphysics of presence" or even a perversion?a
compulsion to grab the amphibian and never let it go, for example.
Since actually finding the body itself, as an extratextual gesture, would
imply the privileging of a fixed position, resting upon a static moment
of reading, or no longer reading at all, my search for the ajolote here
will instead emphasize the contours of the corporeal, the elaboration

of a body that?nonetheless?never abandons the act of writing.
Elizondo's "Ambystoma Trigrinum" exemplifies this writing
body in a gesture reminiscent of the author's earlier text Farabeufo
cronica de un instante. In the midst of his description of the ajolotes,
the narrator of "Amby stoma" reflects: "El instante, esaporci?n durante
la que nuestro ser est? inm?vil entre la luz y la mirada, se amplifica
en esa emanaci?n de eternidad como si el gesto fijo que lo representa
no se resumiera en el cuerpo del que emana, sino en una quietud tan
intensa que es capaz de producir un cuerpo" (30). As in Farabeuf,
here the body appears to be paradoxically both central and secondary
to an instant of frozen temporality. In other words, the material refer
ent is as much the outcome as the origin of the textual moment. In
order to explore this dilemma in its scientific and literary contextual
specificity, I turn to the ajolote.
In "Ambystoma Trigrinum," Salvador Elizondo initiates discus
sion of the ajolote with the dictionary definition from the Spanish
Real Academia:
"Ajolote, (del mejic. Axolotl) m. Zool. larva de cierto

batracio urudelo, de unos 30 cent?metros de largo, con
branquias externas muy largas, cuatro extremidades
y cola comprimida lateralmente; puede conservar
durante mucho tiempo la forma larvaria y adquirir
la aptitud para reproducirse antes de tomar la forma
t?pica del adulto. Vive en algunos lagos de la Am?rica
del Norte" (17).
Here, the dictionary refrains from engaging in taxonomical dis

tinctions between species, which might complicate the question of
the absence or presence of metamorphosis in ajolotes. For example,
amongst some varieties of the ajolote species called Ambystoma
tigrinum,6 one finds cases of neotenia, or reproduction in larval
form, and the absence of metamorphosis; cases of the absence of
neotenia?or obligatory metamorphosis?as well as varieties that
demonstrate variability, that might metamorphose or not, according

to environmental conditions (Smith 17; Kuhn and Jacobs 187-188).
On the other hand, members of the Ambystoma mexicanum species,
native of Xochimilco and Chalco lakes, do not transform into adult
salamanders, but instead maintain their so-called "larval form," except
in cases of laboratory manipulation (Gresens 41). The term "axolotl"
is used today by the international scientific community to refer ex
clusively to the A. Mexicanum species, although the word ajolote is
used colloquially in Mexico in reference to all kinds of salamanders.7
The dictionary definition of "ajolote" cited above, and its inclusion in
a literary text with the title, "Ambystoma Trigrinum," indicate some
degree of ambivalence on the problem of metamorphosis and neote
nia. In calling the ajolote "larva," in opposition to "the typical adult
form," the dictionary seems to focus on the conventional pattern of
the life cycle of amphibious species, which includes metamorphosis,
followed by reproduction. At the same time, emphasis on the pos
sibility of reproduction without metamorphosis indicates that these
categories, separating infancy from adulthood, are less stable than
they might at first appear to be.
It is perhaps logical that in everyday use, the term ajolote should
refer to a variety of species or sub-species, only some of which might
tend to reproduce without metamorphosis. Yet the implied equivalence
between the Ambystoma trigrinum of the story's title, and the defini
tion of the word ajolote, suggests a hybridity which both incorporates
and dissimulates inclusion of the species A. Mexicanum. If the com
mon observer were always able to distinguish between species, there
would perhaps be less uncertainty about neotenia and metamorphosis,
and between the larval and so-called "final" forms. The uncertainty,
however, is also part of the scientific history of the ajolote/axolotl,
of the literature on the topic?as in the case of work by Cort?zar and
Elizondo?and of links between science, literature, and pre-hispanic
mythology. It is X?lotl, the ambivalently metamorphosing God, twin
of Quetzalc?atl, whose name gives rise to the term, axolotl.
What might seem to indicate a minimal difference, or even
part of a scientific discussion without any particular connection to
the literary texts on the ajolote/'axolotl, is nonetheless significant in

Elizondo's text, and in the trajectory of other works that also incor
porate the theme of the same creature, an animal that continues to
generate disconcerting ambiguity. Here, Elizondo writes about the
ajolote from a perspective mediated by the parameters of scientific
observation and experimentation:
En el ajolote la manipulaci?n de esos procesos endo

crinos [de la tiroides y la pituitaria] produce resultados
mucho m?s sorprendentes que en el hombre. Si lo que
determina la pertenencia de un individuo a una especie
es su capacidad de re-producirse sin variaciones, el
ajolote, en la medida en que se puede reproducir en tanto
que ajolote pertenece a la especie de los ajolotes, pero
en la medida en que puede convertirse en salamandra y
reproducirse como salamandra, pertenece a la especie
de las salamandras que, por otra parte son la imago de
su larva, que son los ajolotes. La manipulaci?n de la
actividad de la gl?ndula tiroides en el ax?lotl determina
su cambio de especie en este sentido (21).
This description of glandular and hormonal functions and their

effects in the ajolote suggests the author's knowledge of methods that
have been used in scientific experiments to induce metamorphosis.
In fact, the relationship to which the narrator refers, between meta
morphosis and tiroxine, was first researched during the first decade
of the twentieth century, and continues to be an active topic in cur
rent research (see Coleman and Hessler). Elizondo's "experiment"
here combines the suggestion of a real manipulation of the animal's
glands, with a rhetorical gesture, one that highlights the ease with
which categories of age, form, and reproductive capacity?as applied
to the ajolote?may also be manipulated. Another strange textual
feature here is the immediate substitution of the term ajolote for
ax?lotl. In general, Elizondo uses ajolote in this text in order to refer
to animals that exist in the present, while preferring ax?lotl when he
refers to a mythic past, and to a (fictitious) prehispanic culture called

Axolotitl?n. Yet there are exceptions. In the above cited passage,
axolotl seems out of place, in the midst of a discussion on animals
as subjects in scientific experiments. However, the supposed "change
of species" that occurs thanks to a scientific intervention at once
marks a categorical failure and indicates here a possible entry point
into the mythological discourse of Axolotitl?n. The experimental,
literary invention of two combined species undertaken by Elizondo
also reflects and reproduces significant antecedents from the history
of science, and from prehispanic mythology, while at the same time
underscoring the slippery nature of the axolotl, and its resistance to
classification.
Although mention of the axolotl already appears in several of the
codices transcribed by fray Bernardino de Sahag?n, and in texts of
later historians such as Francisco Hern?ndez, as well as in the work
of Humboldt and Cuvier, the 1863 arrival of 34 axolotls at Paris's
Jardin zoologique dy acclimation du bois de Boulogne, is particularly
significant.8 Only six members of this group survived, and were
given to Auguste Dum?ril for research at the Museum d'Histoire Na
turelle (Dum?ril 1867). Dum?ril received another white or "albino"
axolotl from Mexico in 1866. The majority of laboratory axolotls in
the world today is comprised of descendants of this initial group of
seven animals. The results of Dum?r?'s research are also a source of
confusion surrounding the supposed metamorphosis of the axolotl.
According to the French zoologist, and in contrast to what several
scientists had written in prior articles, the axolotl should be classified
as a caducibranchia, and not as a perennibranchia; in other words,
it represented the larval form of a salamander, and thus had to lose
its branchia (external organs found on certain aquatic animals, that
allow for non-pulmonary respiration) as part of the metamorphosis
that would permit it to leave the water behind permanently.
None of the animals of the first group of axolotls entered the
stage of metamorphosis, but in various individuals of the second
generation, Dum?ril began to notice certain differences: the loss of
branchia, and the appearance of small stains, or spots, on the skin.
Not satisfied with what he had observed, Dum?ril resorted to the ma

nipulation of the axolotls that had not yet undergone transformation,
first offering them a terrestrial habitat, and then simply destroying
their branchia, cutting them bit by bit and thus forcing the axolotls to
make use of their lungs.9 According to the author, his interventions
resulted in metamorphosis in three out of six specimens, while in the
other three, effects seemed ambiguous (250). He concluded that the
axolotl normally would transform into a salamander in its natural
environment, and that it was due to laboratory conditions that some
of the animals did not undergo metamorphosis. "The axolotls of the
menagerie should therefore be considered Amblystoma tadpoles,"10
he affirmed.
Today, however, it is well known that the axolotl, ox Ambystoma
mexicanum, does not undergo metamorphosis, except in cases of
manipulation, typically through the administration of hormones as
mentioned above. The experiment of cutting the axolotl's branchia
has not proven to be an effective method of inducing metamorphosis,
at least from a contemporary scientific perspective. How was it then
possible for Dum?ril to observe metamorphosis amongst the second
generation of axolotls, sometimes even without having to "oper
ate"? Confusion surrounding the question of metamorphosis in the
study of the axolotl is common even today, as H.M. Smith affirms,
partly because of the difficulty of correctly identifying the animals:
"Apparently the original stock received in Paris represented both the
axolotl and its cryptic mimic, the black race of the tiger salamander;
that would explain the exceedingly common observance of transfor
mation of that stock"(7). Hybridization of the two species has been
achieved in the laboratory, and undoubtedly occurred in the first group
of axolotls in Paris, although it doesn't occur in nature, according to
Smith. Ronald Brandon reiterates the problem of confusion between
species, and indicates evidence of the co-existence of A. mexicanum
and A. tigrinum in the area of Xochimilco: "Branchiate Ambystoma
of two phenotypes are sold at the market in Xochimilco (Brandon
1976); one a long-toed form (A. mexicanum) and the other a broad
toed form (A. tigrinum complex) easily confused with it" (19).11
Elizondo's literary hybridization of his own version of the

ajolote imitates and perpetuates the history of scientists' confusion
surrounding the problem of metamorphosis and the classification of
species. And his ajolote also follows the pattern established by the
first group of Parisian axolotls, by incorporating diverse genomes in
the creation of a new animal, under the supposedly controlled condi
tions of the "laboratory." The amphibian thus continues to reproduce
and to recombine its varied genetic material, while at once appearing
to belong to only one distinct species. It is worth noting here that the
presence of the "cryptic mimic, the black race of the tiger salaman
der," in Smith's terms, represents an intrusion that contaminates the
so-called purity of the species, by inserting its genes via a deception
that is only possible thanks to an almost perfect similarity between
the two species. In the context of scientific discourse, "cryptic mim
icry" refers to a strategy of camouflage, which allows members of a
species to avoid being seen and identified by predators. In this case,
the researcher's language implies, perhaps unintentionally, that the
"predators" are human scientists, whose goals of establishing a precise
taxonomy of axolotl species, and isolating A. mexicanum specimens
for further study, run counter to the tigrinum genes ' apparent insistence
on confusing the issue. Indeed, it might be argued that varieties of
A. tigrinum have inadvertently succeeded in perpetuating themselves
in laboratories throughout the world, thanks to their genes' ability to
blend into a mixed A. mexicanum population. The biologist's lan
guage in the above-cited text also suggests a curiously racist rhetoric,
reflective of a discourse of eugenics, and seems to insinuate that if
the troublesome tigrinum genome had not been present in this first
extended contact between New World axolotls and the European sci
entist, the world of science might have more readily understood the
presence of neotenia in a pure, unadulterated A. mexicanum. And it is
undoubtedly significant here that Dum?r?'s discoveries take place in
a colonialist context, since his acquisition of the axolotls was made
possible by the presence of French troops in Mexico.
In Elizondo's text, no distinction between species of ajolote is
made; in other words, deceptive mimicry has been achieved. Bartra,
for his part, does describe differences between A. mexicanum and A.

tigrinum, yet continues to insist on the "axolote" as a single figure of
enigmatic suspension, embodying both neotenia and metamorphosis in
potential. Elizondo's "two species" are the salamander, and "its larva,
which are the ajolotes"; yet this duality belies the presence of another
blurry duo, that of A. tigrinum and A. mexicanum. Beyond the infinite
trace of the ajolote, arbitrarily folded into "two species" (larva and
salamander) the text of "Ambystoma Trigrinum" also conceals the
problem of supposed certainty in science and its methods. Locating
the distinct genomes might clarify the question of metamorphosis, yet
it will also inevitably interrupt the playful free flow of the ambivalent,
graphocentric ajolote.
What Dum?ril observed, the transformation of what appeared to
be one species into another, different one?since both forms of the
axolotl could reproduce independently?repeats itself in Elizondo's
text, but in a more explicitly grotesque manner. The narrator describes
his own experiment, in which he grafts the head of a clear-colored
ajolote onto the body of a darker one: "Se trata de un experimento
preparatorio antes de proceder a provocar la transformaci?n de este
ajolote en salamandra" (26). In this case, the ajolote dies, first the
receiving body, and then the head. This scene of "scientific" torture in
Elizondo might not seem particularly surprising to the reader, given
the well known antecedent of violent narrative in the author's 1965
novel, Farabeuf. Here, however, the explanation of the method, as
well as the described background on metamorphosis and glandular
activity, indicate that the represented torture is more than just another
elaboration of writing as sadistic trace. Elizondo's narrative participates
in its own re-elaboration of a history of science, in which the anteced
ent of Dum?ril plays a fundamental role. In this case, the repetition
of an act through reference to a prior instance of torture simultane
ously suggests the theme of the empty signifier?the violence of the
letter?and the mark of a historical-scientific trace, a violence that
resists its conversion into one more grapheme.
The transatlantic perspective offered by the figure of the axolotl
is based here on the transfer of real axolotls from Mexico to Europe.
If Dum?ril's experiments, and in particular his maintenance of the

axolotl colony, have made possible the ongoing proliferation of the
axolotl as international topic of scientific study, it is just as true that
the literary trajectory of the animal-emblem originates from the same
experiments. And while histories of the scientific study of the axolotl,
during the nineteenth century as well as today, might be said to inter
rupt the fluidity of what would otherwise appear as a purely literary
form of violence, Elizondo's text in turn recreates the experimental
scenarios of laboratory science, and of scientific discourse, thus
elaborating an ajolote-emblem, always insistent on reiterating the
hybrid strategies of the first transnational axolotls.
Curiously, the implied confusion between species and forms of
the ajolote in Elizondo's narrative corresponds to a model established
by a 1969 critical text. Roberto Moreno's study of the ax?lotl in
early Spanish American cr?nicas, and in the N?huatl cosmovision,
makes reference to Cort?zar 's classic story, "Axolotl," but precedes
the publication of El grafo grafo by a few years. Moreno reiterates
several common errors from the history of biology in his description
of the axolotl. He explains Dum?ril's observations and concludes, in
accordance with the French scientist's opinion, and with Elizondo, that
the axolotl is in fact the larva of a salamander. Moreno also adds that
the axolotl is today referred to as "Ambystoma trigrinum" (160).12 In
this sense, he erases the explicit presence of the mexicanum genome,
while at the same time incorporating it into a vision of a partially ficti
tious species which, according to the ignorant observer, sometimes
becomes a salamander, and sometimes reproduces without reaching
"adulthood."13
Moreno's essay traces some of the many interpretations of the god
X?lotl, and his associations with the ax?lotl, or "water (161).
X?lotl is difficult to classify as a god, the author states, and in this
sense ressembles the axolotl; yet in the case of the god, the difficulty
arises from his close relationship to Quetzalc?atl. Moreno explains
that X?lotl has been considered twin and servant to Quetzalco?tl, but
that in addition, a discrepancy between two versions of the myth of
creation of the Fifth Sun suggests that the two deities are in fact one,
that the centrality of X?lotl precedes that of his brother, and that only
later did Quetzalc?atl come to occupy the principal position in the
N?huatl pantheon ( 164).
Insistence here on the role of transformation, as key to the link
between the god and the amphibian within a single etymological
encoding, derives from references to the series of transformations
which X?lotl undergoes, according to various transcribed versions
of N?huatl mythology. In Bernardino de Sahag?n, X?lotl, seeking
to avoid death, transforms himself into a "pie de ma?z que tiene dos
ca?as," a maguey, and finally, an ax?lotl (Moreno 165).14 Yet in ad
dition, this exclusive emphasis on transformation as the axolotVs
primary characteristic elides the problem of neotenia, and that of the
difference between species, the fact that tigrinum animals do undergo
metamorphosis while pure members of the mexicanum species do
not. In other words, if the god X?lotl is difficult to classify, as is the
axolotl, what links the two is more than an apparent transformative
capacity. The connection in fact indicates a slippery area where sci
entific observation and textual interpretation merge in self-replicating
ambivalence. The lack of distinction between transformative and
neotenic species in the text, along with the repetition of an error from
nineteenth century biology, serves in this case to highlight the double
structure of the ajolote problem, notwithstanding the author's inten
tions in this regard. The explicit ambivalence inherent in the duality
Quetzalc?atl-X?lotl, as revealed here, points once again towards the
literally hybrid locus of the mexicanum and tigrinum genomes. What
stands out amongst the various texts and references Moreno cites is
not so much a definition of the characteristics of a "real" or mytho
logical axolotl, nor an answer to the enigma of the animal's name.
Instead one glimpses an opening through which the conjugation of
observations and "erroneous" conclusions shows that multiple texts
and species of ambystoma continue to participate in the redefinition
of the axolotl as object of study.
The ajolote of Elizondo's text, and its place in a literary history
marked, in particular, by the legacy of Georges Bataille, also suggests
another kind of metamorphosis. Both the dedication of "Ambystoma
Trigrinum," to Severo Sarduy, and the title of the book in which the
text appears, El graf?grafo, point towards the ensemble of texts in
which this representation of the ajolote participates. This graphocentric
dialogue initially emerges, according to Emir Rodriguez Monegal,
from a series of photographs of Chinese torture, which appears in
Georges Dumas' Trait? de psychologie. It re-emerges in Bataille's
Les larmes d'Eros, and later tranforms itself into the theme of a
chapter of Cort?zar 's Rayuela, eventually becoming the central, and
visual axis of Elizondo's Farabeuf. Sarduy once again takes up the
transformative thread of this scene of torture, both in his "Del yin al
yang" (from "Escrito sobre un cuerpo") and in his novel, Cobra. The
endless game of sign and image as continuous metamorphosis?cen
tral to Sarduy's notion of the Baroque?suggests the familiar reading
of a saturated text as pure surface. What seems to unite the texts in
this series is not so much their common theme of the photography
of torture, but rather the way in which they continuously elaborate
on the problem of the empty space of visual and written representa
tion, suspended in a spatial-temporal aporia. It is thus with a playful
gesture, a mimicry and redoubling of the endless textual surface, that
Rodriguez Monegal concludes his exploration of Cobra, and affirms
that "no he citado a Derrida ni una sola vez" (1750).
The pleasure that this articulation produces seems, predictably,
to prolong the non-place of writing, or the impropriety of the Der
ridean proper name. It is a pleasure that at the same time allows the
reader to continue to insist, at least for the moment, upon the tired
logic of the bottomless sign. The empty trace, as gesture and theme
that is recognizable in the writing of Elizondo, and that of Sarduy,
indicates the literary trajectory of a graphocentrism in which both
authors participate. Yet the particular relationship that emerges, be
tween "Ambystoma Trigrinum" and "Del yin al yang" also makes
possible a rereading of the problem of the body in the text, in which
this empty trace does not necessarily have the last word.
One may arrive at the figure of the ajolote in Elizondo via multiple
pathways. As mentioned above, Elizondo dedicates his "Ambystoma
Trigrinum," or tiger salamander, from the 1972 book El graf?grafo,
to Sarduy. If, on one hand, the text continues a trajectory established

in Elizondo's 1965 Farabeuf in its inscription of the act of torture
as the basis of an eternal, instantaneous temporality, it also responds
to Sarduy's analysis, from his 1967 "Del yin al yang," in which the
author describes contrasting treatments of the sadistic ritual in work
by Marmori and Elizondo. In the structure employed by Marmori in
his "Storia di Vous," according to Sarduy, "detr?s de su apariencia
significante no hay nada, es un puro trazo, un gesto que no se refiere
m?s que a s? mismo" (1136). Yet in Elizondo's Farabeuf by contrast,
Sarduy reads a dominant literality, the revelation of the "real" referent
from beneath an ideogrammatic language. In other words, within the
limits of Sarduy's text, the double movement, or oscillation between
fluidity and fixity, freedom and bondage (in Sade's terms), language
and referent, defines an opposition between Marmori (empty signs)
and Elizondo (the rupture of metaphor).
Sarduy's observations invite us to imagine a metamorphosis
between Farabeuf's literalized sadism and the metaphorical scenes
of torture present in El graf?grafo, (as posterior response to Sarduy),
of the ajolote that takes its place on the marble slab of an undoubt
edly rather sadistic writer?yet one who is now absolved of literality,
thanks to his dedication to a more metaphorical level of violence. In
an extension of this imaginary trajectory, if Elizondo finds himself, at
the end of Sarduy's "Del yin al yang," at the risky site of the pure and
literal signified, his logical, premeditated reaction will be to transgress
the terms of the argument, to insist even further on the violent play
of signs, in this case framed by the ambiguous intersection of zool
ogy and the mythology of the bestiary. The "graf?grafo" here seems
to impose himself as superior to the literality of the direct referent.
The ambivalent back-and-forth, as described in Sarduy, between
the empty trace of writing, and the "live" grapheme, also suggests a
power struggle, already evident in the framework Sarduy provides in
his reading of Sade. In this sense, Elizondo's graphocentric gesture,
in dedicating his text to Sarduy, and then cutting off the head of the
ajolote, implies an act of vengeance, in which the return to the purity
of the sign also contains the trace of a still more literal violence.
The act of locating the figure of the ajolote within a literary

history of graphocentric revenge is not arbitrary in this case. As
Elizondo explains, in reference to the ajolote: "en la medida en que
puede convertirse en salamandra y reproducirse como salamandra,
pertenece a la especie de las salamandras que, por otra parte son la
imago de su larva, que son los ajolotes" (21). Perhaps strangely, the
imago, which for Elizondo is the salamander, optional adult form
of the ajolote-larva, corresponds to both definitions of the term in
this context; an imago is the final, developed form of an insect, after
having passed through all the stages of metamorphosis, but it may
also refer, in a psychoanalytic reading, to the unconscious image of
an archetype or influential person, for example, the father.
The relationship between father-salamander, "final" adult form
of the animal in question, and the ajolote that is its larva, thus indi
cates an Oedipal struggle underpinning the ties between these texts
and authors, one that is clearly inseparable from the structure of
graphocentrism. The threat to the "father" salamander might therefore
remind the reader of the role of the simulacrum, in Deleuze 's read
ing of Plato. If the simulacrum fails to respect the platonic hierarchy
between idea and image, by reproducing a mere surface appearance,
the ajolote similarly discovers a form of self-reproduction, without
the need for recourse to the paternal essence of the adult species. As
Deleuze points out, Derrida also describes a structure in which writing
(?criture) assumes the role of the simulacrum, which appropriates the
logos without recourse to the father of the logos (the Idea as law of
the father) (Deleuze 295-297).15 Thus the ajolote turns out to be the
violent, graphocentric emblem par excellence.
The ajolote-emblem, new victim of the author's medical and
linguistic experiments, points the reader towards more than one of
Cort?zar 's works, athough not through direct reference. On one
hand, as mentioned above, Rayuela forms part of the symbolic flow
of literary and photographic images of torture, traced by Sarduy and
later by Rodriguez Monegal. On the other, the most literal reference
to Cort?zar 's "Axolotl" is far less ambiguous; Elizondo writes: "Toda
heur?stica se ve comprometida en el hecho, experimentalmente sig
nificativo en el caso del ax?lotl, de la imposibilidad de saber a priori

qui?n observa a qui?n" (18). This troubled intersubjectivity?evoca
tive of a Lacanian mirroring within the analytic nucleus?suggests
an immediately recognizable scene, that of the narrator of Cort?zar's
story face to face with the axolotl of the Paris zoo, or viceversa, and
the transference of narrative subjectivity, from one side of the glass
to the other. The incorporation of the ajolote-ax?lotl into the text also
becomes, according to this notion of heuristics, the incorporation of
Cort?zar himself, and logically, thanks to the violence of the text, the
mutilation of the human or animal figure. Taking sadism to its extremes
appears to reveal the precarious nature of the division between the
pleasure of the pure play of signs, and an absurd literality: the head
of the ay'?/ote-as-Cort?zar (or perhaps as Sarduy) decapitated upon
the marble slab, while Elizondo attempts to graft it onto the body
of the "ajolote recipient." The Oedipal struggle between Elizondo
and his precursors, both French and Latin American, as represented
here, thus insists upon the image of the ajolote as imago, and on an
intertwining of the history of scientific experimentation with that of
the theory of writing as simulacrum.
If the sadistic vision of "Escrito sobre un cuerpo" and of many
of the texts analyzed by Sarduy in his essay implies a dialectic, or
perhaps more accurately a moebius strip, as Sarduy notes, which
combines the fixity of objects in their literality, with the empty
space of the flow of language, the gesture of Elizondo's graf?grafo,
poised before the ajolote, seems to cut and re-order the terms of this
structure. It is a gesture of impossible vengeance, one that would
take up the violence of the letter after having already been assigned
to the compromised space of the literalized referent. Upon cutting
off the head of the ajolote in order to then combine it with the body
of a different ajolote, in a scientific-linguistic experiment doomed to
failure, Elizondo's narrator becomes troubled. It is not that the fluidity
of heuristics, or that of the fleshly metaphor of dissection, disappear
completely here, but rather that a term is added to the sequence, that
of the surprise of the narrator-surgeon, faced with the apparition of a
double corpse?first the ajolote recipient dies, and then the head. The
play of signs releases into an even more severe literality. And at least
for an instant, it becomes painfully clear who is looking at whom.
How is one to interpret the narrator's apparently troubled bewil
derment? Does it suggest the limit to graphocentric activity, where
the pure trace of writing, as privileged site of violence, gives way to
a corpse that can no longer move, and whose name will change no
further? In Elizondo's terms, uLa salamandra yace muerta; ahogada"
(31, my emphasis). Or might it simply indicate one of the poles of
a binary of fluidity and fixity, insistent in its continuous oscillation?
As the same narrator concludes, "El cad?ver fl?cido y verguiforme
es la figura de esa metamorfosis" (31). A conventional interpretation
of graphocentrism in this case would highlight the transcendence of
the fluidity of the written sign. And yet, something remains, between
bewilderment and revenge, even in the most graphocentric moments
of the text. This remainder emerges in part because of the problem of
a literalized vengeance, but above all because of links, as described
here, between Elizondo's story, references to the scientific study of
the axolotl, and N?huatl mythology. Thus theories and stories of
graphocentrism, scientific anecdotes on the problem of metamorphosis
in the axolotl, and the roles of X?lotl and the axolotl in prehispanic
and colonial texts, all begin to merge until reaching crucial instances
of overlap, in which the body-object of study begins to function in
place of a theoretical frame that purported to represent it. X?lotl's
ambivalence and Elizondo's hovering duality of grapheme and
referent both represent and give way to the uncertain and errone
ously documented simultaneity of A. Mexicanum and A. Tigrinum.
Therefore, rather than an endless standoff between fluid and rigid
versions of the axolotl, it is the points of contact and overlap between
the seductive vortex of the graphocentric textual tradition, and the
insistent gesture of scientific taxonomy, that most effectively situate
this literary and fleshly amphibian at the crux of a Latin American
discursive conundrum.
The effect of the juxtaposition ressembles a scenario described by
Derrida, Rodr?guez Monegal's above-cited quip notwithstanding:
What happens when acts or performances (dis

course or writing, analysis or description, etc.) are part
of the objects they designate? When they can be given
as examples of precisely that of which they speak or
write? Certainly, one does not achieve an auto-reflexive
transparency, on the contrary. A reckoning is no longer
possible, nor is an account, and the borders of the set
are then neither closed nor open. Their trait is divided,
and the interlacings can no longer be undone (...) Its
procedure is one of its objects, whence its pace, and
this is why it does not advance very well, or work by
itself (...) Thus it limps and is hard to close.16
The figure of the ajolote "limps" to the extent that its very tactile,
tangible corporeality participates in its curious literary function, or
in the sense that the ajolote exemplifies, with excessive precision, a
theoretical framework which in any case could not exist if it weren't
for the extra-textual ajolote, always present somewhere. By the same
token, the limp of the Latin American ajolote exemplifies its uncertain
division between, on one hand, the ambivalence of the graphocentric
trace, circulating between Bataille, Cort?zar, Sarduy, Elizondo (and
even Derrida), and on the other, the taxonomical history of the first
axolotl immigrants to France, and that of their descendants.
Insistence on the combined corporeality and graphocentrism of
the ajolote at once suggests the uncertainty described by Sarduy in his
reading of the "return of the body" as Baroque, transvestite, tatooed,
and painted: "una pura apariencia, una mimesis" (1303).
For Sarduy, the efficacy of the corporeal gesture remains unre
solved:
Queda por saber si ese exiliado que regresa es el mismo

expulsado, si el actor que vuelve a dominar, a veces
abusivamente, la escena, a controlar los efectos de la
representaci?n, es el mismo a quien ese espacio se
ved?, o si se trata s?lo de su m?scara vaciada, de su
doble desacralizado: simple impostura pintarrajeada

o verdadera subversi?n corporal (1304).
Likewise, the ajolote, as literal amphibian, literary metaphor, or

Latin American discursive location, here offers no explicit answers.
Instead, it demands another reading, and insists upon an ongoing
questioning of the divisions between species and forms, taxonomy and
graphocentrism, here and there, then and now, or better still?between
the genotype of the grapheme, and the phenotype of the decapitated
body.
NOTES
11 would like to thank John Ochoa for his helpful comments on an earlier
version of this article.
1 use the term 'ajolote,' to reflect common usage in Mexico; 'axolotl' is the
scientific name which is used internationally to refer to ambystoma mexicanum\ the
accented 'ax?lotl' comes from N?huatl, and appears in the transcribed versions of
some codices. I have attempted to remain faithful to the terms used by each author
cited here, despite inevitable interchanges between the uses of the three words.
2 Victorio Ag?era analyzes the notion of graphocentrism in his article on El
graf?grafo.
3 For Bartra, the rupture of this dialectic occurs when Mexicans abandon the
figure of the axolote, refusing both the "larval primitivism" of a mythic national
past, and a metamorphosis that would project them into modernity: "Sin haber
sido modernos, ahora son desmodernos; ya no se parecen al axolote, son otros,
son diferentes" (242).
4 As Brett Levinson has written, in reference to Cort?zar's story, "Latin America
does not forfeit its original, genuine being when its indigenous or axolotl world
meets the West during the colonial period. Rather, convergence is the birth, origin,
and essence which the Latin American never ceases both to be and to inherit, but
over which he never succeeds in taking ownership" (18).
51 refer here for example to Emir Rodriguez Monegal's reading of the last
three pages of One hundred years of solitude. Although in this case the text is not,
technically speaking, a fantastic one, the structure proposed by the critic highlights
the role of ethics with respect to the apparent dead-end of textual limits; the same
dilemma is relevant in reading Elizondo's text.
6 The correct term seems to be 'tigrinum,' rather than 'trigrinum,' according
to most of the scientific literature consulted.
7 As Gustavo Casas Andreu et al. insist: "In Mexico the ajolote is so forgot
ten that, while internationally the term axolotl has been assigned exclusively to
the ajolote of Xochimilco (Ambystoma mexicanum), here in our country we call
any representative of the Ambystoma genre 'ajolote.' Ronald Brandon (1989) the
researcher who assigned the name, even textually emphasizes the following: 'It
may seem pedantic-even futile- to attempt to control the use of a common name, but
in this instance the benefit would be great"' (306). ("En M?xico hemos tenido tan
olvidados a los ajolotes, que internacionalmente el t?rmino axolotl se ha asignado
en forma exclusiva al ajolote de Xochimilco (Ambystoma mexicanum), cuando aqu?
en nuestro pa?s se le llama 'ajolote' a cualquier representante del g?nero Ambys
toma. Ronald Brandon (1989) el investigador que hace la asignaci?n del nombre,
inclusive se?ala textualmente lo siguiente...).
8 The axolotls were sent by General Forey, a French military officer who was
in Mexico as part of the preparation for the regency of the emperor Maximiliano
(Casas G. et. Al. 305).
9 "Another experiment remained in order to successfully modify respiratory
function. This consisted of destroying the branchia, in order to see whether, on
forcibly becoming lung-breathing animals, the axolotls would undergo the modi
fications described above." ("Une autre exp?rience restait ? faire pour parvenir ?
modifier la fonction de la respiration. Elle consistait ? d?truire les branchies, afin
de constater si, devenus forc?ment animaux ? respiration pulmonaire, les Axolotls
subiraient l'ensemble des modifications d?crites plus haut" (Dumeril 248).
10 "Les Axolotls de la M?nagerie devraient donc ?tre consid?r?s comme des
t?tards d'Amblystome" (253). Note that "Amblystoma" is an archaic form of the
current Ambystoma.
11 Bartra includes discussion of Dum?ril's work in his book, but does not
specifically pursue the question of why some of the second generation of axolotls
metamorphosed while the first did not.
12 Note that both writers substitute "tigrinum" with "trigrinum."
13 At another point in his text, Moreno cites Eduard Seier, who uses the term
"amblystoma mexicanum" to refer to the axolotl (170) but the taxonomical differ
ence between the species is not emphasized.
14 For further discussion of X?lotl and the legend of the fifth sun, see Bartra,
97-105.
15 Sarduy also cites this reference in "La simulaci?n" (1270).
16 "Que se passe-t-il quand des actes ou des performances (discours ou ?cri
ture, analyse ou description, etc.) font partie des objets qu'ils d?signent? Quand ils
peuvent se donner en exemple de cela m?me dont ils parlent ou ?crivent? On n'y
gagne certainement pas une transparence auto-r?flexive, au contraire. Le compte
n'est plus possible, ni le compte-rendu, et les bords de l'ensemble ne sont alors
ni ferm?s ni ouverts. Leur trait se divise et des entrelacs ne se d?font plus (...) Sa
d?marche est l'un de ses objets, d'o? l'allure, et c'est pourquoi ?a ne peut pas aller
tr?s bien ni marcher tout seul (...) Alors ?a boite et ?a ferme mal" (417-418). The
English version of the text is cited by David Wills in Prosthesis.
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Antebi. A Tiger in The Tank

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A TIGER IN THE TANK: A LITERARY GENETICS OF THE MEXICAN AXOLOTL

Author(s): SUSAN ANTEBI

"Acerca de los ajolotes s?lo dispongo de dos infor

The ajolote, axolotl, or axolotl,1 has been the source of inspira

sic La jaula de la melancol?a. These are just a few of the ajolotesque

Elizondo's text with an anchor in empiricism, one which interrupts

reader's?best defense against both the horrors of laboratory science,

dox of a "stable instability" (157). "Sarduy, much as he aestheticizes

will instead emphasize the contours of the corporeal, the elaboration

"Ajolote, (del mejic. Axolotl) m. Zool. larva de cierto

Here, the dictionary refrains from engaging in taxonomical dis

demonstrate variability, that might metamorphose or not, according

the literary texts on the ajolote/'axolotl, is nonetheless significant in

En el ajolote la manipulaci?n de esos procesos endo

This description of glandular and hormonal functions and their

refers to a mythic past, and to a (fictitious) prehispanic culture called

Not satisfied with what he had observed, Dum?ril resorted to the ma

Elizondo's literary hybridization of his own version of the

for his part, does describe differences between A. mexicanum and A.

If Dum?ril's experiments, and in particular his maintenance of the

to Sarduy. If, on one hand, the text continues a trajectory established

The act of locating the figure of the ajolote within a literary

nificativo en el caso del ax?lotl, de la imposibilidad de saber a priori

What happens when acts or performances (dis

Queda por saber si ese exiliado que regresa es el mismo

doble desacralizado: simple impostura pintarrajeada

Likewise, the ajolote, as literal amphibian, literary metaphor, or

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