Innovative Interpretations: Three Recent Studies by Latin American Women Scholars

This article offers a survey of recent work by women scholars in the field of Latin American Studies. Focusing on the writings of Emily Hind, Ana Forcinito, and Sophia Beal, it identifies dominant threads in their research into masculinity and canon formation in Mexico, women filmmakers in Argentina, poetics of memory in Uruguay, and gender and urban spatiality in Brazil. Set within a larger context of the history of Gender Studies within the discipline, this piece provides a vision of pioneering developments in contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies.

“Notes and Letters”: Music of the City in Flight / Trans-Migratory Poetry. By Antonio Monte Casablanca. Translated by Crystal Neill, Amanda Minks, and Lila Ellen Gray.

In this essay I draw from memory studies and Latin American cultural studies to reflect on Notas y Letras (Notes and Letters), a collaboration by the Nicaraguan band Nemi Pipali and the poet Adolfo Beteta. I analyze these artistic expressions, music and poetry, at their place of convergence—the city of Managua—making audible some of the mechanisms that combine symbolic universes in Nicaraguan culture. This transdisciplinary reading allows me to propose that 1) music becomes a social marker of performative memory, transmitted by sounds present in hybrid Latin American cities, and 2) the migrant subject is displaced and divided between the center and the periphery. Citation: Monte Casablanca, Antonio. “Notes and Letters”: Music of the City in Flight / Trans-Migratory Poetry. Translated by Crystal Neill, Amanda Minks, and Lila Ellen Gray. Ethnomusicology Translations no. 11. Bloomington, IN: Society for Ethnomusicology, 2021. Originally published in Spanish as “‘Notas y Letras’: Música de la ciudad en fuga / Poesía transmigratoria.” Revista de Historia (Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica) 33/34 (2015): 108-129.

Towards a Marxist Theory of Mediation: Contributions from Ibero-America to the Study of Digital Communication

This paper presents and articulates for the first time the concept of mediation as theorised by three key scholars of the Ibero-American space, namely Manuel Martín-Serrano, Luis Martín-Santos, and Jesús Martín-Barbero. This article shows that their understandings of mediation are valuable for the study of digital communication, particularly for identifying criteria that facilitate the sublation of communicative capitalism into communicative socialism. The three scholars have placed the concept of mediation at the centre of their intellectual production with the aim of breaking with mechanical Marxism, but provide differing conceptualisations and have scarcely engaged in a dialogue of knowledges. This article will articulate the complementarity of Martín-Serrano’s Marxist socio-historical analysis of communication, Martín-Barbero’s Latin American cultural studies, and Martín-Santos’s phenomenological theorisation of mediation as the key concept of Marxist epistemology.

Los estudios culturales latinoamericanos: Un recorrido por sus categorías teóricas para el análisis de otros territorios / The Latin American Cultural Studies: A Theoretical Approach for the Analysis of Other Territories

ABSTRACTThis article recovers some of the categories investigated by authors of the Latin American cultural studies, with the aim of understanding their thoughts and to establish dialogues with a problem of concrete investigation. The proposal not only follows from the author's doctoral thesis -based on the study of Pipinas, a town in the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina) hit by the neoliberal policies of the last decades of the 20th century-, it is also the result of her training as a fellow of the National University of La Plata (UNLP).RESUMENEste artículo recupera algunas de las categorías indagadas por autores que se incluyen en la corriente de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos, en pos de comprender matrices de pensamiento y establecer diálogos con una problemática de investigación concreta. La propuesta no sólo se desprende de la tesis doctoral de la autora -basada en el estudio de Pipinas, un pueblo de la provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina) golpeado por las políticas neoliberales de las últimas décadas del siglo XX-, sino que también es el resultado de su formación como becaria de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP).

Selva de fantasmas. El gótico en la literatura y el cine latinoamericanos

Muchos de los lectores recordarán las discusiones de la década de 1990 sobre el valor de los estudios culturales latinoamericanos y los riesgos que estos implicaban para disciplinas como los estudios literarios, la historia del arte o la antropología. En la actualidad, tal debate parece haberse moderado y es cada vez más frecuente la publicación en los países latinoamericanos de libros y artículos que podrían ser cobijados en esta categoría o, para ser más exactos, en la de Latin American cultural studies, dado que son productos de investigaciones desarrolladas en el mundo académico británico o estadounidense. El libro aquí reseñado es un ejemplo de esto.

Estudos culturais latino-americanos e Jesús Martín-Barbero: mais afinidades do que disputas

Although Martín-Barbero claims that “we had done cultural studies long before this label appeared”, this article sustains that, without De los medios a las mediaciones (From the Media to Mediations), Latin American cultural studies would not have developed, especially those linked to communication studies. The argument highlights the kinship between cultural studies, especially in the version associated with the Birmingham School, and the premises of the research program proposed by the Spanish-Colombian author. To trace these affinities, the combination of methodological programmatic and ethnographic approaches was adopted.

Transculturation and Bourdieu’s habitus theory

In the last two decades, Bourdieu’s sociology has provided appropriate tools for examining the work of literary translators through history. However, Bourdieusian approaches to literary translation seem to reproduce a major problem underlying Bourdieu’s theory; namely, a deterministic view of human behaviour. This article, against the alleged incompatibility between sociological approaches and culturalist paradigms, proposes to combine Bourdieu’s sociology with the notion of transculturation borrowed from Latin American cultural studies. The article demonstrates how transculturation helps elucidating the divided and contradictory nature of the habitus, as it was originally formulated by Bourdieu in his early writings on Kabylian society. Data from my previous study on the translational activity of Dai Wangshu in Republican China are used to illustrate how transculturation reveals itself as a valid model for the study of literary translators through history beyond the limitations of a sociologically-informed approach based exclusively on a Bourdieusian perspective.

O Caso Bernardo no telejornalismo: a percepção de advogados sobre a apresentação do fato no Jornal Nacional

Analisar como um determinado grupo de advogados recepciona a morte e asnotícias sobre o Caso Bernardo veiculadas no Jornal Nacional. Realizou-se um estudo de recepção com cinco profissionais da área do Direito, através da aplicação de um questionário semiestruturado e de um grupo de discussão. A base teórico-metodológica foram os Estudos Culturais Latino-Americanos, de Martín-Barbero (2013).Palavras-chave: morte; recepção midiática; caso Bernardo; Jornal Nacional.El Caso Bernardo en el teleperiodismo: la percepción de abogados sobre la presentación de la noticia en el Jornal NacionalResumen: Analizar como un determinado grupo de abogados han recepcionado la muerte y las noticias sobre el Caso Bernardo vehiculadas en el Jornal Nacional. Se realizó un estudio de recepción con cinco profesionales del área del Derecho, através de la aplicación de un cuestionario semiestructurado y de un grupo de discusión. La base teórico-metodológica fueron los Estudios Culturales Latinoamericanos, de Martín-Barbero (2013).Palabras clave: muerte; recepción mediática; caso Bernardo; Jornal Nacional.Bernardo’s Case on Television Journalism: The lawyer’s perception on the facts presentation on Jornal NacionalTo analyze how a certain group of lawyers welcome death and the news about Bernardo´s Case presented in the Jornal Nacional. A reception study was conducted with five lawyers, through the application of a semi-structured questionnaire and a group discussion. The theoretical-methodological basis was the Latin American Cultural Studies, by Martín-Barbero (2013).Keywords:death; media reception; Bernardo’s Case; Jornal Nacional.