Libre Acceso: Latin American Literature and Film Through Disability Studies

Description

Analyzes the diverse roles and pervasive presence of disability in Latin American literature and film. Libre Acceso stages an innovative encounter between disciplines that have remained quite separate: Latin American literary, film, and cultural studies and disability studies. It offers a much-needed framework to engage the representation, construction, embodiment, and contestation of human differences, and provides tools for the urgent resignification of a robust and diverse Latin American literary and filmic tradition. The contributors discuss such topics as impairment, trauma, illness and the body, performance, queer theory, subaltern studies, and human rights, while analyzing literature and film from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru. They explore these issues through the work of canonical figures Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, João Guimarães Rosa, and others, as well as less well-known figures, including Mario Bellatin and Miriam Alves. Contents......Page 6 Illustrations......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction: A Latin American Context for Disability Studies......Page 14 Disability Studies in the Latin American Context......Page 17 Disability Studies and Latin American Studies: A Transdisciplinary Approach......Page 20 Concepts in Disability Studies......Page 22 Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Latin Americanist Readings......Page 24 Libre Acceso......Page 27 Notes......Page 33 Works Cited......Page 36 Part I: Disability Life Writing and Constructions of the Self......Page 40 brief retelling of a loss......Page 42 a loss foretold......Page 43 wretched stuff......Page 44 naming an I......Page 45 losing an eye that never abandons you......Page 46 oblivion’s certitude......Page 47 blood: sweet or fresh......Page 48 drafting blindness......Page 49 groping in the dark......Page 50 the curious monster......Page 51 ocular intelligence......Page 52 victims, the vision-less, visionaries......Page 54 blind love......Page 55 never stop......Page 56 what is irretrievable......Page 57 Works Cited......Page 58 Chapter 2 “La cara que me mira”: Demythologizing Blindness in Borges’s Disability Life Writing......Page 60 Notes......Page 72 Works Cited......Page 73 Chapter 3 Negotiating the Geographies of Exclusion and Access: Life Writing by Gabriela Brimmer and Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez......Page 76 Notes......Page 89 Works Cited......Page 90 Part II: Global Bodies and the Coloniality of Disability......Page 94 Chapter 4 Otras competencias: Ethnobotany, the Badianus codex, and Metaphors of Mexican Memory Loss and Disability in Las buenas hierbas (2010)......Page 96 Foundations of a Mexican Disability Discourse......Page 98 A Feminist Ethnobotany......Page 103 Localizing a Global Diagnostic Paradigm......Page 105 Hybrids, Copies, and a Third (Age) Cinema......Page 107 Impressions of Loss......Page 110 Notes......Page 111 Works Cited......Page 112 Chapter 5 Cripping the Camera: Disability and Filmic Interval in Carlos Reygadas’s Japón......Page 116 Notes......Page 130 Works Cited......Page 131 Chapter 6 Bodily Integrity, Abjection, and the Politics of Gender and Place in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666......Page 134 Works Cited......Page 146 Introduction......Page 148 Disability in Global Contexts......Page 149 War and Disability......Page 152 Trauma and Disability......Page 155 Conclusions......Page 159 Notes......Page 160 Works Cited......Page 162 Part III: Embodied Frameworks: Disability, Race, Marginality......Page 166 Chapter 8 Sô Candelário’s Inheritance: Leprosy as a Marker of Racial Identity in João Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956)......Page 168 Notes......Page 181 Works Cited......Page 182 Chapter 9 “A solidão da escuridão”: On Visual Impairment and the Visibility of Race......Page 186 “Victims of a Physical Darkness”......Page 189 Synesthetic Language and Afro-Brazilian Metaphor......Page 194 Between black and Black in The Black Book of Colors......Page 197 Coloring the World, Blackly......Page 199 Notes......Page 201 Works Cited......Page 202 Foreword......Page 204 Ethical Criticism and Documentary: Is the Implied Author of Estamira Going Solo?......Page 205 Informed Consent, Documentary, Disability: Estamira on the Phone......Page 210 Testimony: The Eloquence in the Hand......Page 214 Notes......Page 219 Works Cited......Page 220 Filmography......Page 221 Chapter 11 “En ninguna parte”: Narrative Performances of Mental Illness in El portero by Reinaldo Arenas and Corazón de skitaleitz by Antonio José Ponte......Page 222 On the Threshold......Page 223 “En ninguna parte”......Page 229 Notes......Page 234 Works Cited......Page 236 Part IV: Imagining Other Worlds......Page 240 Chapter 12 The Disability Twist in Stranger Novels by Mario Bellatin and Carmen Boullosa......Page 242 Mario Bellatin and Biografía ilustrada de Mishima......Page 244 Carmen Boullosa and the Stranger Novels......Page 249 Notes......Page 254 Works Cited......Page 255 Chapter 13 The Blur of Imagination: Asperger’s Syndrome and One Hundred Years of Solitude......Page 258 Imaginations......Page 260 Asperger’s Syndrome......Page 263 One Hundred Years of Solitude......Page 265 Notes......Page 269 Works Cited......Page 270 Epilogue #YoSoy......Page 272 Works Cited......Page 277 Contributors......Page 278 Index......Page 282