The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism Reading Otherwise [Hardcover]

This volume looks at the shifting role of aesthetics in Latin American literature and literary studies, focusing on the concept of 'ethical responsibility' within these practices. The contributing authors examine the act of reading in its new globalized context of postcolonial theory and gender and performance studies.Introduction: Reading Otherwise; E.G.Zivin PART I: ETHICS, POLITICS, REPRESENTATION The Ethical Superstition; B.Bosteels Ethics, Perhaps; G.Basterra PART II: ETHICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES Cultural Studies in the Blogosphere: Academics Meet New Technologies of Online Publication; I.Avelar Modernist Ethics: Really Engaging Popular Culture in Mexico and Brazil; E.Gabara PART III: THE LIMITS OF LITERATURE A Few Notes on Constructed Worlds: The Contradictory Legacy of Past Decades; S.Chejfec Saying the Unsayable: Saer, Or for an Ethics of Writing; G.Riera Infrapolitics and the Thriller: A Prolegomenon to Every Possible Form of Anti-Moralist Literary Criticism on H?ctor Aguilar Cam?n's La guerra de Galio and Morir en el golfo; A.Moreiras PART IV: THE EXPERIENCE OF READING Ethical Asymmetries: Learning to Love a Loss; D.Sommer Reading for the People and Getting There First; F.Masiello

The ethical 'turn' in Latin American literary and cultural criticism marked a withdrawal from or renunciation of politics that was generally coincident with the hegemony of neoliberalism. The great value of this collection is that it effects a reversal of this tendency, in a new context marked by the resurgence of the left, or 'lefts,' in Latin America. It seeks to find new ways of conceiving the political from the ethical. That desire, however, marks the collection as a site of conflict and debate - and that, too, is part of its urgency and richness.

- John Beverley, Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and Founding member, Graduate Program in Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh

A dynamic collection that will makeló“