ESPECTROS - Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives

Espectros is a compilation of original scholarly studies that presents the first volume-length exploration of the spectral in literature, film, and photography of Latin America, Spain, and the Latino diaspora. In recent decades, scholarship in deconstructionist "hauntology," trauma studies, affect in image theory, and a renewed interest in the Gothic genre, has given rise to a Spectral Studies approach to the study of narrative. Haunting, the spectral, and the effects of the unseen, carry a special weight in contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultures (referred to in the book as "Transhispanic cultures"), due to the ominous legacy of authoritarian governments and civil wars, as well as the imposition of the unseen yet tangible effects of global economics and neoliberal policies.

Ribas and Petersen's detailed introductory analysis grounds haunting as a theoretical tool for literary and cultural criticism in the Transhispanic world, with an emphasis on the contemporary period from the end of the Cold War to the present. The chapters in this volume explore haunting from a diversity of perspectives, in particular engaging haunting as a manifestation of trauma, absence, and mourning. The editors carefully distinguish the collective, cultural dimension of historical trauma from the individual, psychological experience of the aftermath of a violent history, always taking into account unresolved social justice issues. The volume also addresses the association of the spectral photographic image with the concept of haunting because of the photograph's ability to reveal a presence that is traditionally absent or has been excluded from hegemonic representations of society. The volume concludes with a series of studies that address the unseen effects and progressive deterioration of the social fabric as a result of a globalized economy and neoliberal policies, from the modernization of the nation-state to present.

List of contents

Contents

Introduction: Theories of the Ghost in a Transhispanic Context by Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen

Part I. Ghostly Encounters: Haunted Histories
Chapeter 1: The Museum of Memory: Spectral Presences and Metaphoric Re-membering by Megan Corbin
Chapter 2: The Bright Future of the Ghost: Memory in the Work of Javier Marías by Isabel Cuñado
Chapter 3: The Spectrality of Political Violence: Exhuming Guatemala's Haunted Past in Tanya Maria Barrientos's Family Resemblance and Sylvia Sellers's When The Ground Turns in its Sleep by Susana S. Martínez

Part II. The Persistence of Violence: Trauma as Haunting
Chapter 4: Apparitions and Absence: Spectrality in Contemporary Novels of the Disappeared
by Karen Wooley Martin
Chapter 5: The Literalization of Trauma's Specter and the Problematization of Time in
Aparecidos by Charles St-Georges
Chapter 6: Phantom Children: Spectral Presences and the Violent Past in Two Films of Contemporary Spain by Sarah Thomas
Chapter 7: Fog Instead of Land: Spectral Topographies of Disappearance in Colombia's Recent Literature and Film by Juliana Martínez

Part III. Still Images: The Living and the Dead
Chapter 8: Framing and Feeling Immigration: Haunting Visuality and Alterity in Ramito de hierbabuena by N. Michelle Murray
Chapter 9: Memento Mori: Photography and Narrative in Cristina Rivera Garza's Nadie Me verá Llorar by Marta Sierra

Part IV. Invisible Hands: Specters of the Market Economy
Chapter 10: Cubagua's Ghosts by Juan Pablo Lupi
Chapter 11: Portraits of the Walking Dead: Transgressing Genres and (In)visible Demographics in Maurice Echeverría by María del Carmen Caña Jiménez
Chapter 12: Haunting Capitalism: Biutiful, the Specter, and Fantasies of the Global Market
by Victoria L. Garrett and Edward M. Chauca
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

About the author

Edited by Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen - Contributions by María del Carmen Caña Jiménez; Edward M. Chauca; Megan Corbin; Isabel Cuñado; Victoria L. Garrett; Juan Pablo Lupi; Karen Wooley Martin; Juliana Martínez; Susana S. Martínez; N. M

Product details

• Assisted by: Amanda L. Petersen (Editor), Alberto Ribas-Casasayas (Editor)
• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 03.04.2017
• EAN: 9781611487381
• ISBN: 978-1-61148-738-1
• No. of pages: 260
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 14 mm
• Weight: 382 g
• Subject: Fiction > Poetry, drama