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Title: "Narrativas de transicion en el cine y la literatura de Chile : neorrealismo, virtualidad y cuerpos ciberneticos de la postdictadura"
Creator: Vidal-Jones, David A.
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation project explores cultural narratives in Chile during the transition to democracy from 1990 to 2010. I examine the impact of literature and cinema in the construction of (post) national discourses and its implications in the context of the globalized Chilean society. In the works of Alberto Fuguet, Carlos Franz, Alicia Scherson, Ernesto Díaz-Espinoza and Gonzalo Contreras, I advance the idea of a third space in transition which allows a post-colonial place of enunciation that...
Show moreThis dissertation project explores cultural narratives in Chile during the transition to democracy from 1990 to 2010. I examine the impact of literature and cinema in the construction of (post) national discourses and its implications in the context of the globalized Chilean society. In the works of Alberto Fuguet, Carlos Franz, Alicia Scherson, Ernesto Díaz-Espinoza and Gonzalo Contreras, I advance the idea of a third space in transition which allows a post-colonial place of enunciation that falls between democratic realism and authoritarian narratives of dictatorship.Following Bernardo Subercaseaux’s conceptualization of historical national time as a theatrical world of spectacle, this dissertation explores emergent narratives of liminal communities, interrupting dichotomist discourses about the past.This study situates the following literary and cinematographic corpus between the centripetal discourse of national imagined communities and the centrifugal dynamics of globalized imagination. Walter Mignolo’s concept of ‘borderthinking’ helps to problematize the post authoritarian local-global axis, inciting the following question: Can we determine the existence of a new kind of post-national neorealism in Chile’s post-authoritarian period? If so, do these narratives present a disruption from the post-dictatorial rhetoric? Alberto Fuguet’s novel Mala onda (1991) and film Se arrienda (2005) offer fractured subjects as they enter fluid spaces between modernity and resistance. As the main characters fail, desacralizing the bildungsroman, they allow a critical representation of the subject within democratic realism, defined by Nelly Richards. Conversely, Ernesto Díaz-Espinoza and his film trilogy Kiltro, Mirageman and Mandrill (2006-2009) render a parody of the national hero between the fluid spaces of global and local realities. Through the novel Películas de mi vida (1993), Alberto Fuguet dislocates the period of political transition towards democracy with new temporality and velocity relocating the narrative from extraterritorial spaces. This study problematizes also the concept of ‘virtual realism’ in Alicia Scherson’s film Play (2005) and Carlos Franz’s novel Santiago cero (1988). These works navigate the world of hyperreality created through epistolary interchanges and virtual gaming to contest the place of enunciation of the national subject, specifically its construction and deconstruction process of Santiago’s neoliberal landscape. Finally, the figure of the cyborg appears to challenge democratic progressivism through historicity and memory in the works of Gonzalo Contreras’s novel La ciudad anterior (1991) and Alberto Fuguet’s film Velódromo (2009).It is important to establish a connection between these works and new ‘glocal’ imaginaries that have been overlooked since the decade of the 1990s. These cultural productions, in their visual and textual dynamic language, challenge national identities by intersecting the global with a local through folklorization, parody, and hyperbolic realisms. They deconstruct the naturalized national hero and reconstitute virtual and precarious cyborg identities disrupting dominant discourses such as the dictatorship and the democratic transition rhetoric.
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Title: Estrellas, medios y relatos de fútbol en México (1941-2001)
Creator: Gonzalez Landeros, Alejandro
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACTESTRELLAS, MEDIOS Y RELATOS DE FÚTBOL EN MÉXICO (1941-2001) ByAlejandro González Landeros This doctoral dissertation explores how Mexican soccer narratives have changed throughout the 20th century under the impact of different platforms of mass media and new technologies (i.e. written press, radio, cinema and television). I have three goals in undertaking this project. First, I map and trace the history of changes of what I call “the parole of Mexican soccer” or the way Mexico talks...
Show moreABSTRACTESTRELLAS, MEDIOS Y RELATOS DE FÚTBOL EN MÉXICO (1941-2001) ByAlejandro González Landeros This doctoral dissertation explores how Mexican soccer narratives have changed throughout the 20th century under the impact of different platforms of mass media and new technologies (i.e. written press, radio, cinema and television). I have three goals in undertaking this project. First, I map and trace the history of changes of what I call “the parole of Mexican soccer” or the way Mexico talks about soccer. Second, I explore how Mexican media invested in creating a soccer star mega-system. Third, I analyze how Mexican soccer imagination changes under the impact of a media cross-fertilizations process. Up to this point, there are no studies that research how different technologies influence of language of Mexican soccer. This is a void that I propose to fill by revising the history of the relationship between soccer and mass media in Mexico throughout the 20th century. My dissertation consists of 5 chapters. The first chapter analyzes Esto, which became the sports weekly magazine most widely sold in Mexico during the 40s. In this chapter, I examine how Esto narrated soccer by addressing the following questions: 1) how did the press begin to organize and imagine Mexican soccer narratives, 2) how did Esto’s chronicles and/or interviews build a star-system that later established itself as a common practice for other mass media, and 3) what rhetoric started to be associated with soccer, or how was a soccer narrative founded in the newspapers of the 1940s. The second chapter analyzes the “Golden Age” of Mexican cinema, especially the movie Los hijos de don Venancio (1944). I review how did cinema speak about soccer in Mexico along with the star system that movies built or how they fed the celebrity discourse already institutionalized by the written press. In chapter three, I focus in Chanoc (1959-1981?), which was one of the most successful comic books in the 1960s through the 1980s. By entering the universe of soccer comic books, Mexican soccer began to be narrated through parody and picaresque. Also, the topics start to diversify. Acknowledging all these changes, I explore how Chanoc mocked the “nación mexicana futbolera” through the lens and satirized language of Televisa sport commentator Ángel Fernández, a major talking point of Chanoc’s football series. Chapter four analyzes how Tomás Mojarro talked in his UNAM radio program Paliques y cabeceos (1982-1986) about the social and economic implications that the 1986 World Cup had on its staging throughout Mexico. Tomás Mojarro provides insights into Televisas’s investments in the mega-event, and how the Mexican state aided the media corporation. The last chapter analyzes the telenovela El juego de la vida (2001) and the new “sentimental” and “feminine” language that the soap opera added to the existing (male) narratives of soccer in Mexico. I am interested in finding how this telenovela was able to imagine the impossible women of mid/high classes becoming protagonists of such an uncharted territory of Mexican masculine landscape.
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Title: La gente bien : literary and cultural representations of the Mexican aristocracy from the mid-twentieth century to the present
Creator: Solano-Rabago, Diomedes
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation studies novelistic, mass-media representations, as well as reproductive models of a particular, yet elusive sector of the Mexican elite frequently labeled as “gente bien” (“well-to-do”) a cultural construct in which perceptions of race and heritage confer distinction to a network of families of European descent. In my study, I claim that the literary and film production after the 1950’s decidedly questions the traditional Mexican national discourse that populist...
Show moreThis dissertation studies novelistic, mass-media representations, as well as reproductive models of a particular, yet elusive sector of the Mexican elite frequently labeled as “gente bien” (“well-to-do”) a cultural construct in which perceptions of race and heritage confer distinction to a network of families of European descent. In my study, I claim that the literary and film production after the 1950’s decidedly questions the traditional Mexican national discourse that populist administrations (from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, “el PRI”), imposed for most of the Twentieth Century. In developing my arguments for a new reading of some major works in Mexican fiction and film, this dissertation explains why it is essential to understand some of the literary responses to the Mexican post-revolutionary discourse by resorting to notions of cultural capital and class distinction in Mexican narratives, anchoring these concepts to the postcolonial perspective of social elites, the performativity of their rituals, and their strategies of social and biological reproduction. Since the late-1950’s a significant number of Mexican novelists and filmmakers have sought to capture the consequences of the Revolution on individuals and communities in works that depict Mexican society, especially the reality of a recognizable aristocracy. My dissertation examines the ways in which these authors seek to represent and comment on the decline of the landowning aristocracy vis-à-vis the upward social mobility of the industrial bourgeoisie, the newly-formed ruling elite, the aspiring middle classes; and most recently, media celebrities.The introduction hosts a theoretical framework that traces the genealogy of the Mexican aristocracy and maps out its presence in society. Chapter one concentrates on the early narrative of Carlos Fuentes and discusses the literary representations of the Mexican aristocrats and the process of imitation and social intermingling in the 1950s. Here, I compare several models of social reproduction that aristocrats use to preserve their status by making their social distinction a commodity.Chapter two studies the cinematographic portrayal of the Mexican elites in the second half of the Golden Age of Mexican Film (1950-1958). This chapter offers a close analysis of audiovisual status symbols that distinguish aristocratic characters. Since it was during this time that films sought to legitimize a post-revolutionary national image, here I question the historical and sociological referents presented as Mexican national culture and the artistic roles of Mexican film directors stars.Chapter three focuses on narrative works by Elena Poniatowska, Guadalupe Loaeza, and José Emilio Pacheco, all of whom published novels that depict social mobility and criticize the official discourse of the 1950’s in Mexico City. These novels, published in the last two decades of the Twentieth Century, present the manner by which aristocratic distinction is instilled and reproduced during childhood.Chapter four analyzes contemporary representations of the Mexican elite in television and social media. The first part concentrates on a collection of newspaper articles and vignettes that present comedic portrayals of wealthy women. This dissertation concludes with a critique to current trends in Mexican media, which has appropriated the aristocratic discourse and has extended it to characterize actors, elected officials, and other public personalities.
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Title: Retórica de la imitación : identidad sexual y raza en la producción cultural dominicana y puertorriqueña contemporánea
Creator: Montalvo, Jonathan
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Esta tesis examina cómo las producciones culturales de la República Dominicana y Puerto Rico, particularmente la literatura y el cine, establecen una conexión entre género, sexualidad, raza y los discursos políticos e intelectuales represivos en ambos países. Exploraré desde una perspectiva queer cómo estas producciones (de)centralizan los discursos hegemónicos y paternalistas que perpetúan identidades raciales, sexuales y de género fijas en la región. En este proceso de cuestionamiento, se...
Show moreEsta tesis examina cómo las producciones culturales de la República Dominicana y Puerto Rico, particularmente la literatura y el cine, establecen una conexión entre género, sexualidad, raza y los discursos políticos e intelectuales represivos en ambos países. Exploraré desde una perspectiva queer cómo estas producciones (de)centralizan los discursos hegemónicos y paternalistas que perpetúan identidades raciales, sexuales y de género fijas en la región. En este proceso de cuestionamiento, se pueden identificar dos tendencias que guían este estudio. Por un lado, las producciones puertorriqueñas queer reproducen y a la vez cuestionan los discursos de los intelectuales de la Generación del 30. Por otro lado, los escritores dominicanos denuncian las luchas de la comunidad diverso-sexual y sus estrategias para sobrevivir en una sociedad caótica a consecuencia de los disturbios políticos durante los regímenes de Rafael L. Trujillo y Joaquín Balaguer. Los autores dominicanos y puertorriqueños analizados en este estudio utilizan una nueva retórica caribeña, la cual llamo la retórica de la imitación. Los personajes de las obras analizadas imitan algunos elementos de modelos sexo-genéricos y raciales hegemónicos. De este modo, los escritores contemporáneos utilizan esta nueva retórica para idear estrategias (a través de la imitación de esos modelos) con las cuales puedan cuestionar los discursos dominantes históricamente perpetuados por la clase política e intelectual de ambos países caribeños.
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Title: Figuraciones transatlánticas : visiones globales de la narrativa hispánica contemporánea
Creator: Ruifernandez-Conde, Virginia
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation maps out the novelistic production of a handful of writers that I have coined "the Hispanic Atlantic." This term refers to a cultural, financial, and geographical space in which the Atlantic Ocean functions as a site that connects Spain, Spanish America, and the United States. The novelistic production I study questions the traditional notion of national literature. At the same time, my research provides a new look at what, after Jünger Habermas, has been labeled as ...
Show moreThis dissertation maps out the novelistic production of a handful of writers that I have coined "the Hispanic Atlantic." This term refers to a cultural, financial, and geographical space in which the Atlantic Ocean functions as a site that connects Spain, Spanish America, and the United States. The novelistic production I study questions the traditional notion of national literature. At the same time, my research provides a new look at what, after Jünger Habermas, has been labeled as "postnational." More specifically, my dissertation studies the intersection of Spanish and Latin American writers as they relocate on both sides of the Atlantic, and by doing so, reach new levels of global success that were unprecedented in Hispanic national literature. My dissertation focuses on the narrative work of authors Agustín Fernández Mallo, Javier Marías, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón from Spain, as well as Roberto Bolaño and Boris Izaguirre from Latin America. In my analysis of their works, I carefully examine the way in which notions of national cultures and their aftermath are represented with a particular emphasis on the reception of those works on both sides of the Atlantic.Chapter one concentrates on Spanish writers that today are influential in the global market of the novel. I start by examining the literary production of Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. More specifically, I analyze the unprecedented global best-seller status that these writers are experiencing beyond the Spanish publishing industry. Chapter two studies two specific authors that have been successful in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, but still have not experienced a global commercial success similar to the authors studied in chapter one. These authors are Javier Cercas and Javier Marías. The historical and sociological referent of the literature they are producing is ingrained in Spanish national culture rather than in globalization. In this chapter, I explore the sociological reality of literary awards and the impact they have on the way the Spanish publishing industry promotes authors beyond Spanish borders. Finally, I also examine the high modernist status inherent in the works these authors produce.Chapter three focuses on the writing of two successful Latin American authors: Roberto Bolaño and Boris Izaguirre. As a result of the influx of global immigration to Spain, several cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Seville) are becoming the residence of many Latin American writers who have stayed in Spain and are experiencing enormous achievement. One of the most important examples is the case of the Chilean Roberto Bolaño whose novelistic project has become a success of global proportions. In my analysis of these two novelists, I pay close attention to the way in which these novels concerned themselves with the cultural counterpoint of nationhood and cosmopolitanism. Chapter four analyzes the latest Spanish narrative which pays attention to the global market. The work produced by these novelists is quite influenced by the U.S. cultural industry. My study focuses on the novelistic discourse of Spanish writers Ray Loriga, Lucía Etxebarría, and Agustín Fernández Mallo, as well as Afterpop ́s cultural critic Eloy Fernández Porta. In my study of these authors, I focus on how these writers incorporate different manifestations of pop and mass culture in order to actively participate in the global markets of the publishing industry.
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