Latin American and Iberian Studies

This paper analyzes Roberto Bolaño’s Amuleto (1999), and in particular its interest in the contemporary limits of political resistance. The essay subsequently juxtaposes the novel’s depiction of the massacre at Tlateloco with Carlos Fuentes’ Los 68: Paris, Praga, México (2005), and its use of both a non-fictional memoir of Paris in 1968 and a fictionalized account of Tlateloco. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates how Los 68 attempts to recuperate a kind of subjectivity in which utopian imaginaries defined the 1960s, but which Amuleto’s mobilization of allegory reveals as emptied out.

This chapter examines the dynamics of nation, family, and memory in Fernando León de Aranoa’s films and in relation to the neoliberalization of Spain that marked the 1990s and early 2000s. In Léon de Aranoa’s films and screenplays, the family emerges as the primary figure for the nation: from the family as a microcosm of the neoliberal nation marked by a lack of collective memory in Familia (1996) to the family as synecdoche of social class in Los lunes al sol (2002).

Encrucijadas Globales is a timely collection of essays that explores redefinitions of Spain in the global era from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on globalization studies, postcolonialism, new historicism, discussion of collective memory theory, political science, and transatlantic studies. The matrix that supports this ambitious book is how to examine the present, in which, on one hand, structures of power relegate history to oblivion, and which, on the other hand, is marked by the emergence of new discourses trying to counteract the global reach of neo-liberalism. Citing Manuel Castells (1997), José Colmeiro explains in his introduction that the idea of what Spain is today is deeply connected to the effects that globalization has had on its economy, politics, ideology and culture, to say nothing of the increased porousness of its borders that, in many ways, have eroded the idea of the nation itself. For this reason, Colmeiro explains, this volume aims to draw the reader's attention not just to Atlantic and European contexts, but to the relation between peripheral nationalisms and transnational perspectives as well, all of which demands a more thorough examination of the concept of the nation today. In an attempt to understand this imbrication of the global and the local, Colmeiro's volume brings together a set of essays that ultimately provides a sense of how this redefinition of the nation is animated by the articulation of history, memory, national allegories and discourses of global justice (particularly in relation to Spanish Human Rights campaigns in the Southern Cone following the end of the dictatorships).

This chapter maintains that Alicia Scherson’s film offers a keen sense of what the interface between aesthetics and politics looks like within cinema today. I analyze Scherson’s Play (2004), the first digital film produced in Chile for wide distribution, in relation to the defamiliarizing techniques that make, Santiago, the global neoliberal city, an object of desire for the film’s protagonist, Cristina, a Mapuche maid/care-worker. Turning to Jacques Rancière’s “aesthetics of politics,” I argue that placing the maid at center stage serves to render her role within the family and society at large unfamiliar. More precisely, by presenting the maid as a spectator at the margins, Scherson produces a nuanced critique of Chilean society and its class divisions that, at the same time, mark the limits of both cosmopolitanism and the social realist cinema of films like Sebastián Silva’s La nana [The Maid] (2009).

The Blurred Image: The Aesthetics of Impunity in Pablo Larraín’s No and El Club

This chapter analyzes two works by the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, No (2012) and El club (2015), in relation to what can be described as his aesthetics of impunity. Rather than simply seek an appropriate dramatic structure, Larraín employs filters that simulate old anamorphic lenses and natural lighting as means to achieve what he describes as a certain “tone” or “texture.” The director’s desire for an image that captivates the senses has everything to do with the subject matter of his films, particularly as these relate to the legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship and the theme of impunity. In this way, Larraín’s cinematic techniques can also be said to engage with what Jacques Rancière calls the politics of aesthetics, a “distribution of the sensible” that determines “the system of self-evident facts of sense perception,” in other words, the relationship between the “sensible” or that which is given to sense perception. Larraín’s cinematic style goes together with a community or society unable to evolve to a new state, a stasis derived from a legacy of impunity, presented in both films: the neoliberal legacy of Pinochet and the unpunished crimes of the Catholic Church. Larraín’s aesthetics is analyzed in relation to the national and international reception and signature style of these films.

Literary texts are social artifacts embedded in a web of dynamic relations, which are subjected to the vagaries of history. These include, but are not limited to, the manifold relations established between the author, the text, the editor, and the readers. Individuals and institutions are intimately involved and linked to a book's history, and thus are a fundamental part of that history. In the case of the longest living books, classic literary texts, a book's destiny often depends on the relations it establishes over time with individuals and institutions responsible for literary, commercial, and ideological matters. The history of Lazarillo de Tormes is a splendid example of this.

Resumen Este ensayo propone que ciertas variaciones y discontinuidades que la crítica aprecia en la picaresca pueden entenderse a la luz de las luchas políticas habidas en la Castilla de la primera modernidad en torno al control de la imaginación y a la instrumentalización de la representación simbólica en las maniobras de legitimación dentro del nuevo sistema absolutista. El control de la representación simbólica, en manos de agentes sociales di-versos procedentes de la realeza, la aristocracia, la Iglesia y el amplio grupo de los letrados (escritores y lectores por excelencia) se llevó acabo a través de la implementación una extensa legislación y de la aplicación directa o indirecta de varias formas de censura: civil, eclesiástica y moral. A su vez, la actuación de la censura tuvo un papel extraordinariamente importante en el desarrollo de la picaresca. Abstract The Limits of Representation: Picaresque Novel, Censorship and History This essay proposes that certain variants and discontinuities within the picaresque tradition can be understood in light of the political battles fought around the political instru-mentation of symbolic representation and control of the imagination in Early Modern Castile. Those social agents in charge of controlling symbolic representation (aristocrats, members of the Church and the Royal Court, and the letrados (learned men) implemented such control by using extensive legislation as well as censorship. Censorship, in turn, had a major impact in the development of the picaresque tradition.

Si pensamos en la picaresca y en la historia de la literatura castellana más allá de sí mismas, como parte de una historia de la cultura y de la sociedad, resulta que en los anaqueles olvidados por historiógra- fos pero cuidadosamente vigilados por bibliógrafos, los historiadores del libro y sociólogos del texto pueden hallarse claves para un estudio extenso del fenómeno picaresco como hecho literario, cultural, social y político. Para ello tenemos que observar el hecho literario en la historia, algo que, aunque no incompatible con el acercamiento filológico en el más estricto sentido del concepto, sí choca con acercamientos militantemente textuales o «teóricos».

Este trabajo combina el uso de herramientas digitales y tradicionales para el tratamiento de problemas en los campos de los estudios textuales, la historia de la literatura, los estudios de censura, la historia del libro y la sociología del texto. Se presenta una comparación textual computacional de la Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes (Amberes, 1554) y Lazarillo de Tormes Castigado (Madrid, 1573); sobre sus resultados, se realiza un análisis de la transmisión textual, una evaluación del alcance de la censura e intervención editorial de Juan López de Velasco y una discusión de sus efectos sobre el desarrollo de la picaresca.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Lazarillo, Lazarillo Castigado, Juan López de Velasco, colación digital, censura, trans- misión textual, picaresca, Juxta Commons.

En este volumen se recopila una serie de artículos e investigaciones de distintos autores y de diversas áreas en torno al Lazarillo de Tormes y sus continuadores, analizando desde varias perspectivas la obra y sus ramificaciones, tanto en cuanto a su texto primigenio, como sus más famosas continuaciones y las traducciones que de la obra se han hecho a algunos idiomas en que está disponible. Reyes Coll-Tellechea: Lazarillo de Tormes: Notas para la historia de un texto inestable Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es aplicar los estudios de transmisión textual a un texto como el Lazarillo, caracterizado por la inestabilidad y la discontinuidad. Durante sus quinientos años de vida, ha experimentado múltiples circunstancias, destacando las diversas modalidades de apropiación que se han producido por parte de autores, impresores, editores, lectores, censores y críticos. En las páginas que siguen, se analizarán tres problemas de transmisión concretos: en primer lugar, el papel fundamental de la edición de Mathias Gast (Burgos) y la edición de Martín Nucio (Amberes) en la transmisión del Lazarillo; en segundo lugar, el expurgo inquisitorial que sufrió el texto y, por último, los problemas del "Prólogo" y sus interpretaciones tipográficas.

As I write these lines, it is not clear who is in charge of the US government...

This opinion piece was published by Commonwealth Magazine on January 12, 2021
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/the-threat-to-democracy-is-not-over/