Is the affiliation between intellectuals and hegemony unbreakable When intellectuals attempt to retell history from its bottom side or when writers try to represent the socalled marginalized subject are they not simply reinforcing the perspective and agenda of societys hegemonic currents Cooptation Complicity and Representation engages in a discussion of the problem of this potentially unbreakable affiliation between intellectuals and hegemony. Through five twentiethcentury Mexican literary works Pedro Pramo 1955 Juan Rulfo Hasta no verte Jess mo 1969 Elena Poniatowska three short stories from Ciudad Real 1960 Rosario Castellanos Llanto Novelas imposibles 1992 Carmen Boullosa and Muertos incmodos falta lo que falta 2005 Subcomandate Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II this book attempts to examine the contradictory phenomenon that emerges when intellectuals desire to represent a marginalized subject or history clashes with their own limited ability to fully know the marginalized. No critics have compiled these five seemingly unrelated Mexican texts in order to scrutinize such a contradictory tendency.