James Scorer | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

Books by James Scorer

In this book James Scorer argues that culture remains a force for imagining inclusive urban futur... more In this book James Scorer argues that culture remains a force for imagining inclusive urban futures based around what inhabitants of the city have in common. Using Buenos Aires as his case study, Scorer takes the urban commons to be those aspects of the city that are shared and used by its various communities. Exploring a hugely diverse set of works, including literature, film, and comics, and engaging with urban theory, political philosophy, and Latin American cultural studies, City in Common paints a portrait of the city caught between opposing forces. Scorer seeks out alternatives to the current trend in analysis of urban culture to read Buenos Aires purely through the lens of segregation, division, and enclosure. Instead, he argues that urban imaginaries can and often do offer visions of more open communities and more inclusive urban futures.

Free download: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/130728 Comics Beyond the Page in Latin Americ... more Free download: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/130728

Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement.

Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities.

Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies.

Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia.

This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from Latin America both view and expre... more This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from Latin America both view and express memory formation on major historical events and processes. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, and history, explore topics including national identity construction, narratives of resistance to colonialism and imperialism, the construction of revolutionary traditions, and the legacies of authoritarianism and political violence.

https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36665

Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2019

Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and convivial... more Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and conviviality offers useful ammunition for strengthening anti-racist stances. This volume asks whether cultural production has a particular role to play within discourses and practices of anti-racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors analyse music, performance, education, language, film and art in diverse national contexts across the region.

The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.

Papers by James Scorer

IdeAs: Idées d'Amériques, 2022

From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation... more From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation communities to the forest fires that rampage across the Gran Chaco due to soy deforestation, the devastating impact of neoextractivism is writ large in the Americas. To the backdrop of ecological devastation and the struggle for natural resources, local peoples across the region are faced with the impact of cultural upheaval and displacement brought about by faceless multinational corporations. In this article, I address the way two comics artists have used the graphic form to address neoextractivism, highlighting how investigative comics can create counterimaginaries of exploitation by relating image-stories told by local inhabitants. In 2016, working in collaboration with Nelly Luna Amancio and Ojo Público, the Peruvian Jesús Cossio published the webcomic La guerra por el agua, a study of the impact of the Tía María mine in Ayacucho, southern Peru, an operation owned by the Mexican company Southern Copper, later also released as a newspaper-sized pamphlet version in 2018. And in 2020 the US-Maltese Joe Sacco – who spoke at the launch of La guerra por el agua – released his graphic work Paying the Land, an exploration of the upheaval caused to the Dene in the Mackenzie River Valley by both the Canadian state and mining enterprises. Though both journalistic works are cut through by social protest and political wranglings, they simultaneously demonstrate the power of the micropolitical – in which we might include the comic form itself – to transgress the narratives and imaginaries of big capital.

ESTUDIOS FILOLÓGICOS, 2018

En los últimos años, los imaginarios culturales argentinos y chilenos se han volcado con mayor re... more En los últimos años, los imaginarios culturales argentinos y chilenos se han volcado con mayor regularidad al lugar de la provincia y / o el interior. En este artículo ubicamos dentro de esta tendencia a dos novelas contemporáneas ambientadas en la década de 1990, La descomposición (2007) del escritor argentino Hernán Ronsino y Niños extremistas (2013) del chileno Gonzalo Ortiz Peña, con el fin de explorar la configuración del espacio del pueblo provincial. En la historia cultural latinoamericana el pueblo ha ocupado tanto topográfica como simbólicamente un lugar liminal entre la ciudad y el campo. Su violencia inherente, ya sea constructiva o destructiva, desafía, entre otras cosas, la estricta dicotomía entre civilización y barbarie que a menudo se ha utilizado para separar los espacios urbanos de los rurales. En este artículo exploramos la violencia constitutiva del pueblo en ambas novelas, y el modo en que los cambios productivos del paisaje propios del desarrollo neoliberal afectan los cuerpos y sus formas de vida en niveles insospechados. Mientras La descomposición condensa esa violencia al ritmo acompasado de vidas humanas y no humanas en decadencia, Niños extremistas libera esa violencia inherente a la velocidad desbordada de la destrucción festiva. Ya sea en diálogo con el canon prexistente de una literatura del interior, o en el camino de lo improbable, ambas novelas abren la posibilidad de un nuevo corpus literario alrededor del espacio del pueblo.
Palabras claves: literatura, pueblos, violencia, neoliberalismo, paisaje productivo y afectivo.

In recent years Argentine and Chilean cultural imaginaries have (re)turned with increasing regularity to the locus of the province and/or the interior. In this article we locate two contemporary novels set in the 1990s –La descomposición (2007) by the Argentine writer Hernán Ronsino and Niños extremistas (2013) by the Chilean Gonzalo Ortiz Peña– within this trend by analysing how they deploy the provincial town. The town has played an important role in the (cultural) history of Latin America, occupying both a topographically and symbolically liminal place between the country and the city. The violence inherent to these towns (whether constructive or destructive) challenges, among other things, the strict dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism that has often been used to separate rural from urban spaces. In this article we explore the constitutive violence of the town in both novels, in which changes in the landscape affect both bodies and ways of life in unexpected ways. While La descomposición incorporates that violence into the measured rhythms of human and non-human lives that are decaying, Niños extremistas turns that inherent violence into the boundless pace of festive destruction. Whether in dialogue with a pre-existing canon of a literature of the interior, or via an exploration of the implausible, both novels open up the possibility of a literary corpus around the figure of the town.
Key words: literature, towns, violence, neoliberalism, productive and affective landscapes

Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2018

In this article, I explore the way that Alberto Breccia, one of Latin America’s most important co... more In this article, I explore the way that Alberto Breccia, one of Latin America’s most important comics artists, engages with the history and cityscape of the neighbourhood of Mataderos in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I focus on two of his comics set in this meat-packing district: the series Un tal Daneri (1974–77), written by Carlos Trillo, and the short-story ‘El aire’ (1976), written by Guillermo Saccomanno. Created during a period of increasing political violence, I analyse how these works express the material practice of animal slaughter as well as the slaughterhouse’s potent political symbolism. In particular I argue that the highly material, embodied techniques that Breccia uses, including cuts with blades, paper tears and collage, present Mataderos as an assemblage where human, animal and non-human fuse together. They also remind us of the material labour processes that underpin both these images and the neighbourhood itself. As a result, I suggest, these works both suggest an alternative to the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism that has dominated the Argentine political and urban imaginary, and also demonstrate how artistic practice can be used to embody the materiality of marginal bodies and spaces.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2017

Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies entitled 'Visua... more Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies entitled 'Visualising Traces of the Past in Latin America'

The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2017

Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to ... more Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of ‘classical’ ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West’s contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.

History of Photography, 2014

This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian r... more This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian ruins were a key element of national and regional identity formation in Peru, used to engage with the role diverse ethnicities should play in new social and political relations, Chambi’s work offers a privileged lens for studying the role of photography in terms of marshalling the material past. Some images Chambi took at Machu Picchu offer a set of tropes for a photographic aesthetics of ruins – one indicative of the way the site continues to be venerated as an object lost in the past by contemporary photographers. Other images, however, not least his self-portraits and group photographs, depict a more historically aware, tactile and, unusually, enjoyable relationship to ruins.

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2010

This article reads graphic biographies of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in the light of the cultural read... more This article reads graphic biographies of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in the light of the cultural readings of Che that describe themselves as works that ‘get to know the man behind the myth’. Framing this desire within the shifting, postmodern nature of the well-known Che icon – Alberto Korda's ‘Guerrillero heroico’ – the article looks at comics by Spain Rodriguez, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, Sergio Sinay, and Héctor Oesterheld and Alberto and Enrique Breccia. With specific reference to the ways these works depict Che's death in Bolivia, the article shows how they all fail to engage with the local specificities of his failed Bolivian campaign; rather than deal with Che's inability to attract local peasants, they choose to show the campaign as an act of heroic sacrifice. In so doing they forget how those selfsame peasants participated in the globalization of the Che icon.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2008

This article revisits Tintin's adventures in Latin America, not only tracing the themes of coloni... more This article revisits Tintin's adventures in Latin America, not only tracing the themes of colonialism and the ethnographic present in the works but also reconsidering the traditional reading of The Adventures of Tintin as simply a patronizing vision of the Latin American other. The article draws on fluid notions of latinidad to highlight how Tintin and friends are sometimes (unwittingly) able to `act Latin' — at least until Tintin becomes weary of his adventures and, in so doing, loses his own sacred nature.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2010

Chapter from New Trends In Argentine and Brazilian Cinema edited by Cacilda M. Rêgo and Carolina ... more Chapter from New Trends In Argentine and Brazilian Cinema edited by Cacilda M. Rêgo and Carolina Rocha (Intellect, 2011)

Journal of Romance Studies, 2013

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2008

Analysing the last Argentine dictatorship in the light of contemporary re-examinations of war, th... more Analysing the last Argentine dictatorship in the light of contemporary re-examinations of war, this article argues that the 1976–1983 dictatorship can be understood as a shift in war(s), from la guerra sucia to the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, from a limitless and unsustainable internal war to a bracketed external war. That external war is shown to be an attempt to re-found a nation imploding through disappearance. Drawing on the history of disappearance in Argentina reveals that, despite obvious differences, there are many continuities between the dictatorship and other regimes, emphasising the dangers of a politics that encourages a nation ‘re-malvinizada’.

In this book James Scorer argues that culture remains a force for imagining inclusive urban futur... more In this book James Scorer argues that culture remains a force for imagining inclusive urban futures based around what inhabitants of the city have in common. Using Buenos Aires as his case study, Scorer takes the urban commons to be those aspects of the city that are shared and used by its various communities. Exploring a hugely diverse set of works, including literature, film, and comics, and engaging with urban theory, political philosophy, and Latin American cultural studies, City in Common paints a portrait of the city caught between opposing forces. Scorer seeks out alternatives to the current trend in analysis of urban culture to read Buenos Aires purely through the lens of segregation, division, and enclosure. Instead, he argues that urban imaginaries can and often do offer visions of more open communities and more inclusive urban futures.

Free download: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/130728 Comics Beyond the Page in Latin Americ... more Free download: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/130728

Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement.

Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities.

Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies.

Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia.

This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from Latin America both view and expre... more This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from Latin America both view and express memory formation on major historical events and processes. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, and history, explore topics including national identity construction, narratives of resistance to colonialism and imperialism, the construction of revolutionary traditions, and the legacies of authoritarianism and political violence.

https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36665

Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2019

Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and convivial... more Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and conviviality offers useful ammunition for strengthening anti-racist stances. This volume asks whether cultural production has a particular role to play within discourses and practices of anti-racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors analyse music, performance, education, language, film and art in diverse national contexts across the region.

The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.

IdeAs: Idées d'Amériques, 2022

From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation... more From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation communities to the forest fires that rampage across the Gran Chaco due to soy deforestation, the devastating impact of neoextractivism is writ large in the Americas. To the backdrop of ecological devastation and the struggle for natural resources, local peoples across the region are faced with the impact of cultural upheaval and displacement brought about by faceless multinational corporations. In this article, I address the way two comics artists have used the graphic form to address neoextractivism, highlighting how investigative comics can create counterimaginaries of exploitation by relating image-stories told by local inhabitants. In 2016, working in collaboration with Nelly Luna Amancio and Ojo Público, the Peruvian Jesús Cossio published the webcomic La guerra por el agua, a study of the impact of the Tía María mine in Ayacucho, southern Peru, an operation owned by the Mexican company Southern Copper, later also released as a newspaper-sized pamphlet version in 2018. And in 2020 the US-Maltese Joe Sacco – who spoke at the launch of La guerra por el agua – released his graphic work Paying the Land, an exploration of the upheaval caused to the Dene in the Mackenzie River Valley by both the Canadian state and mining enterprises. Though both journalistic works are cut through by social protest and political wranglings, they simultaneously demonstrate the power of the micropolitical – in which we might include the comic form itself – to transgress the narratives and imaginaries of big capital.

ESTUDIOS FILOLÓGICOS, 2018

En los últimos años, los imaginarios culturales argentinos y chilenos se han volcado con mayor re... more En los últimos años, los imaginarios culturales argentinos y chilenos se han volcado con mayor regularidad al lugar de la provincia y / o el interior. En este artículo ubicamos dentro de esta tendencia a dos novelas contemporáneas ambientadas en la década de 1990, La descomposición (2007) del escritor argentino Hernán Ronsino y Niños extremistas (2013) del chileno Gonzalo Ortiz Peña, con el fin de explorar la configuración del espacio del pueblo provincial. En la historia cultural latinoamericana el pueblo ha ocupado tanto topográfica como simbólicamente un lugar liminal entre la ciudad y el campo. Su violencia inherente, ya sea constructiva o destructiva, desafía, entre otras cosas, la estricta dicotomía entre civilización y barbarie que a menudo se ha utilizado para separar los espacios urbanos de los rurales. En este artículo exploramos la violencia constitutiva del pueblo en ambas novelas, y el modo en que los cambios productivos del paisaje propios del desarrollo neoliberal afectan los cuerpos y sus formas de vida en niveles insospechados. Mientras La descomposición condensa esa violencia al ritmo acompasado de vidas humanas y no humanas en decadencia, Niños extremistas libera esa violencia inherente a la velocidad desbordada de la destrucción festiva. Ya sea en diálogo con el canon prexistente de una literatura del interior, o en el camino de lo improbable, ambas novelas abren la posibilidad de un nuevo corpus literario alrededor del espacio del pueblo.
Palabras claves: literatura, pueblos, violencia, neoliberalismo, paisaje productivo y afectivo.

In recent years Argentine and Chilean cultural imaginaries have (re)turned with increasing regularity to the locus of the province and/or the interior. In this article we locate two contemporary novels set in the 1990s –La descomposición (2007) by the Argentine writer Hernán Ronsino and Niños extremistas (2013) by the Chilean Gonzalo Ortiz Peña– within this trend by analysing how they deploy the provincial town. The town has played an important role in the (cultural) history of Latin America, occupying both a topographically and symbolically liminal place between the country and the city. The violence inherent to these towns (whether constructive or destructive) challenges, among other things, the strict dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism that has often been used to separate rural from urban spaces. In this article we explore the constitutive violence of the town in both novels, in which changes in the landscape affect both bodies and ways of life in unexpected ways. While La descomposición incorporates that violence into the measured rhythms of human and non-human lives that are decaying, Niños extremistas turns that inherent violence into the boundless pace of festive destruction. Whether in dialogue with a pre-existing canon of a literature of the interior, or via an exploration of the implausible, both novels open up the possibility of a literary corpus around the figure of the town.
Key words: literature, towns, violence, neoliberalism, productive and affective landscapes

Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2018

In this article, I explore the way that Alberto Breccia, one of Latin America’s most important co... more In this article, I explore the way that Alberto Breccia, one of Latin America’s most important comics artists, engages with the history and cityscape of the neighbourhood of Mataderos in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I focus on two of his comics set in this meat-packing district: the series Un tal Daneri (1974–77), written by Carlos Trillo, and the short-story ‘El aire’ (1976), written by Guillermo Saccomanno. Created during a period of increasing political violence, I analyse how these works express the material practice of animal slaughter as well as the slaughterhouse’s potent political symbolism. In particular I argue that the highly material, embodied techniques that Breccia uses, including cuts with blades, paper tears and collage, present Mataderos as an assemblage where human, animal and non-human fuse together. They also remind us of the material labour processes that underpin both these images and the neighbourhood itself. As a result, I suggest, these works both suggest an alternative to the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism that has dominated the Argentine political and urban imaginary, and also demonstrate how artistic practice can be used to embody the materiality of marginal bodies and spaces.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2017

Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies entitled 'Visua... more Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies entitled 'Visualising Traces of the Past in Latin America'

The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2017

Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to ... more Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of ‘classical’ ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West’s contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.

History of Photography, 2014

This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian r... more This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian ruins were a key element of national and regional identity formation in Peru, used to engage with the role diverse ethnicities should play in new social and political relations, Chambi’s work offers a privileged lens for studying the role of photography in terms of marshalling the material past. Some images Chambi took at Machu Picchu offer a set of tropes for a photographic aesthetics of ruins – one indicative of the way the site continues to be venerated as an object lost in the past by contemporary photographers. Other images, however, not least his self-portraits and group photographs, depict a more historically aware, tactile and, unusually, enjoyable relationship to ruins.

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2010

This article reads graphic biographies of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in the light of the cultural read... more This article reads graphic biographies of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in the light of the cultural readings of Che that describe themselves as works that ‘get to know the man behind the myth’. Framing this desire within the shifting, postmodern nature of the well-known Che icon – Alberto Korda's ‘Guerrillero heroico’ – the article looks at comics by Spain Rodriguez, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, Sergio Sinay, and Héctor Oesterheld and Alberto and Enrique Breccia. With specific reference to the ways these works depict Che's death in Bolivia, the article shows how they all fail to engage with the local specificities of his failed Bolivian campaign; rather than deal with Che's inability to attract local peasants, they choose to show the campaign as an act of heroic sacrifice. In so doing they forget how those selfsame peasants participated in the globalization of the Che icon.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2008

This article revisits Tintin's adventures in Latin America, not only tracing the themes of coloni... more This article revisits Tintin's adventures in Latin America, not only tracing the themes of colonialism and the ethnographic present in the works but also reconsidering the traditional reading of The Adventures of Tintin as simply a patronizing vision of the Latin American other. The article draws on fluid notions of latinidad to highlight how Tintin and friends are sometimes (unwittingly) able to `act Latin' — at least until Tintin becomes weary of his adventures and, in so doing, loses his own sacred nature.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2010

Chapter from New Trends In Argentine and Brazilian Cinema edited by Cacilda M. Rêgo and Carolina ... more Chapter from New Trends In Argentine and Brazilian Cinema edited by Cacilda M. Rêgo and Carolina Rocha (Intellect, 2011)

Journal of Romance Studies, 2013

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2008

Analysing the last Argentine dictatorship in the light of contemporary re-examinations of war, th... more Analysing the last Argentine dictatorship in the light of contemporary re-examinations of war, this article argues that the 1976–1983 dictatorship can be understood as a shift in war(s), from la guerra sucia to the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, from a limitless and unsustainable internal war to a bracketed external war. That external war is shown to be an attempt to re-found a nation imploding through disappearance. Drawing on the history of disappearance in Argentina reveals that, despite obvious differences, there are many continuities between the dictatorship and other regimes, emphasising the dangers of a politics that encourages a nation ‘re-malvinizada’.