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Papers by Maria Canelo

Oficina do CES, Sep 1, 2021

This paper offers an analysis of self-representations in texts of an autobiographical nature publ... more This paper offers an analysis of self-representations in texts of an autobiographical nature published recently by three undocumented migrants in the United States. Following the recent phenomenon of claiming visibility as the right to be seen, this piece of research looks into elaborations of citizenship, namely whether forms of affect are "allowed" into modes of belonging not necessarily mediated by the law or connected to citizenship. Notions such as "acts of citizenship" (Isin, 2008) and "affective citizenship" (Grossberg, 2015; Ayata, 2019) form the critical lens to approach the texts. Articulated into forms of attachment, the undocumented migrants' positions as expressed in these texts can foster our imagination towards more encompassing notions of citizenship that include forms of belonging beyond the territorial, the legal, and the duty to the land.

Barbara Kruger's urban-inspired visual artworks articulate a critique of the discursive construct... more Barbara Kruger's urban-inspired visual artworks articulate a critique of the discursive constructions both of the consumer and of consumption itself. A former designer and picture editor in magazines, Kruger resorts to the aesthetic and linguistic techniques of advertising and media to challenge the forms of knowledge of the consumption society. In line with Michel Foucault's theory of discourse as a network of disciplinary knowledges, this paper will read consumptionthe discipline-, and the consumerthe subject it produces-, against Kruger's visual techniques in order to examine how the latter call into doubt the disciplining effect of consumption and, in particular, how Kruger's reworking on the notion of the gaze is involved in that process. The analytical grid combines a Foucauldian perspective with the tools of visual discourse analysis proposed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen.

Os estudos culturais, durante muito tempo acusados de constitufrem um campo vago, indefinido e ca... more Os estudos culturais, durante muito tempo acusados de constitufrem um campo vago, indefinido e carente de uma metodologia precisa, parecem co-me^ar agora a dar origem a outras areas, que, bem cientes dessas crfticas, apresentam focos e contornos precisos e metodologias bem estabelecidas. Com The Practice of Cultural Analysis estamos perante um desenvolvimento e uma deriva^ao no campo dos estudos culturais, que com este manifesto anuncia a sua emancipate. 1 O presente volume constitui o cartao de visita da Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), tendo resultado da primeira conferencia da escola. Nele se explicita que a analise cultural, conforme entendida e praticada pelo grupo de crfticos que compoe este volume, quer-se como um estadio alem das humanidades e dos estudos culturais e distingue-se em particular pelo empenho do crftico em reflectir sobre o seu proprio papel na construto cultural-o seu desejo da realidade. Mieke Bal, que fundou e dirige a ASCA, organizou e orquestra toda a obra, assinando nao so a introduto, como os capftulos introdutorios das varias sec^oes. Se partirmos de uma definite geral dos estudos culturais como uma investigate e problematiza<;ao da natureza e implicates dos processos produtores da cultura e das condi<t es materials em que estes ocorrem, poderemos entender melhor onde reside a diferen^a da proposta da Escola de Amesterdao; basicamente, ela alarga a responsabilidade dos agentes da cultura. Propondo um entendimento da cultura como comportamento cultural, este passa a ser distribufdo por dois sujeitos, aquele que produz o objecto e aquele que produz conhecimento e significado sobre o objecto. A analise cultural e, afinal, no percurso dos estudos culturais, uma reacte contra as acusates de superficialidade e indefinite* Prova disso e a teorizate cuidada presente em varios capftulos do estudo, como a Introdut°de Mieke Bal e os capftulos de Evelyn

Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 1998

This paper looks into issues of visuality in Carmen Miranda's image in tandem with some of the cu... more This paper looks into issues of visuality in Carmen Miranda's image in tandem with some of the cultural and political aims established in Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 Message to Congress, "The Four Freedoms". Carmen Miranda's image of the stylized baiana (as constructed in Carmen's films in the United States) is tentatively set within the framework of Guy Debord's theory of the 'culture of spectacle'. The analysis explores the contribution of Carmen's baiana to the war effort, its mobilization of the public's gaze and sympathy for Latin American neighbors, and will ultimately shed light on the intricacies of culture, history and politics in the context of the Good Neighbor Policy.

Oficina do CES, Feb 1, 2011

Even though Carey McWilliams remains fairly unknown, his activism and critical thinking span near... more Even though Carey McWilliams remains fairly unknown, his activism and critical thinking span nearly fifty years of United States' history and culture. A lawyer, cultural critic, writer, journalist and social historian, and also the editor of the left-wing magazine Nation for over two decades, McWilliams's critique identifies him easily as a public intellectual. He combined his legal experience with cultural criticism and committed himself to the reinvention of legal concepts and practices, which is one of the aspects I stress in this paper. In this, I see him as anticipating, among others, very actual debates, such as that on legal activism. While presenting a broad overview of his criticism of culture, this paper will attempt a closer look into the development of what he called his 'legal imagination'. In a lecture to college students delivered at Cooper Union, in New York, in 1976, Carey McWilliams elaborated on what he called 'the power of ideas' in terms that I find fitting to

e a ideia da cidadania cultural nos anos 40 e 50 Introdução William Beyer tenta sintetizar a biog... more e a ideia da cidadania cultural nos anos 40 e 50 Introdução William Beyer tenta sintetizar a biografia de Carey McWilliams em três palavras, ao descrever este crítico cultural norte-americano como "a lawyer by training, an author by inclination, and a political activist by instinct". Sintetizar as actividades de McWilliams não é de facto fácil, mas a fórmula de Beyer é bem conseguida, pois dá conta da pluralidade de campos em que McWilliams interveio e identifica as principais fontes de conhecimento que se entretecem nas teorias inovadoras que concebeu (1988: 332). O percurso de McWilliams, da literatura para o direito e daí para o activismo, e ao mesmo tempo nestas três áreas, é afinal um percurso comum a vários intelectuais da década de 30, cujo contexto político-nos Estados Unidos, o New Deal e a Popular Front-propicia a participação directa dos intelectuais no Estado, como mediadores entre as pessoas e as instituições. 1 Essa transição não foi no entanto fácil, como McWilliams descreve numa carta a Mary Austin, em 1931: "You are quite right in thinking that my law work will interfere with what writing I do. The clash between the two is becoming very difficult to manage. I fear that I shall soon write like a lawyer and argue like a writer". 2 Poder-se-ia pensar que McWilliams trocou efectivamente a literatura pelo direito e o direito pelo activismo, mas a 'imaginação jurídica' nunca abandonou os seus projectos. O direito continuou a ajudá-lo na concepção das suas utopias de uma sociedade mais justa e, se havia conflito entre a prática do direito e a da literatura, o resto da sua vida resolveu-o. Por um lado, permitindo-lhe imaginar uma sociedade diferente, como outros fizeram na literatura; por outro,

Comparative Literature Studies, 2018

Nach einem Studium der Anglistik und Germanistik arbeitet sie an einer Dissertation zu Fragen der... more Nach einem Studium der Anglistik und Germanistik arbeitet sie an einer Dissertation zu Fragen der »cultural citizenship« an der Universität New York.

Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, Mar 23, 2017

American studies journal, 2020

Undocumented immigrants usually trust their voices to immigration activists rather than engaging ... more Undocumented immigrants usually trust their voices to immigration activists rather than engaging with strategies of visuality to reclaim their rights. The universe of illegal border crossing is about radical experiences of invisibility, misidentification, erasure, dispossession, and disappearance. First person testimonies by undocumented immigrants have, however, seen the light of day throughout the last decade in unsuspected media venues, from the New York Times to the Guardian, small sites of independent journalism, and also some book publications. Revealing their presence, their names, and their faces seems a brave decision, when the risk of deportation is part of their everyday reality. In my reading of their testimonies and the photographs illustrating them, I follow two theoretical lines that engage with the subjectivities of marginalized groups: sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ elaboration of a post abyssal thinking and cultural critic Nicholas Mirzoeff’s ideas of spaces of appearance and practices of counter visuality. Combining them will allow me to analyze how instances of self-representation by undocumented immigrants in the United States contribute to crafting a new subject position by a group who, by definition, cannot speak because it is deemed non-existent in legal terms. The issue brings back to the discussion Gayatri Spivak’s classical questions on subalternity and power.

This paper examines the impact of World War II in the home front as represented in short-stories ... more This paper examines the impact of World War II in the home front as represented in short-stories published in the U.S. wartime journal Common Ground. Published between 1940 and 1949, the magazine combined literature and social and cultural critique in its progressive analysis of matters of race, immigration, citizenship, and civil rights. Although Common Ground's intellectual community committed itself to protect unity at the home front, it published complex representations of the theme of homecoming in particular, conveying instances of latent violence at the national level that challenged the sense of 'homeliness.' The analysis attempts a combination of theories of the nation with Gaston Bachelard's considerations on the poetics of space and Sigmund Freud's notion of the uncanny.

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, Jun 1, 2006

MARIA JOSÉ CANELO Dimensões geopolíticas do modernismo. Contraculturas mexicanas na Califórnia Pr... more MARIA JOSÉ CANELO Dimensões geopolíticas do modernismo. Contraculturas mexicanas na Califórnia Proponho-me repensar o modernismo tendo em conta a airmação de homi k. bhabha de que "cada repetição do signo da modernidade é diferente, especíica das suas condições de enunciação históricas e culturais". Centrando-me na obra de Carey McWilliams, procuro dar a conhecer e discutir um trabalho crítico que salienta a dimensão geopolítica do modernismo e demonstra que a modernidade não deu, de facto, origem a um tipo único de experiência nos estados unidos. neste caso, o contexto da Grande Depressão, enquanto coniguração histórica e cultural especíica, exige uma reformulação da expressão e das formas modernistas, na medida em que torna evidente que, quando a modernização fracassa, emergem na sociedade americana fenómenos de desenvolvimento desigual que desaiam a deinição de modernidade. A relexão crítica de McWilliams antecipa conigurações críticas actuais, das "contraculturas da modernidade" às "modernidades alternativas".

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, Feb 1, 1997

The articles in this volume have emerged in an interdisciplinary space in-between sociology, soci... more The articles in this volume have emerged in an interdisciplinary space in-between sociology, sociolinguistics, visual anthropology, political science and cultural studies. The contributors took part in one of the panels within the 2nd International Symposium of the International Association of Discourse and Society Studies, jointly organised by the Centre for Social Studies and the School of Humanities of the University of Coimbra in June 2015 (EDiSo, June 18-20). They all share a common interest in viewing urban landscapes as public spaces that are socially produced. Being situated in power relations, as well as based on inequalities, discourse and identities coexist and compete for representation. In this sense, each and every instance of visual communication – be it a piece of graffiti on a wall, a banner in an urban protest or political campaign, or even a shop or a street sign – performs ideologies as people and collectives who produce them make choices

Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, Dec 23, 2022