Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives

by Alberto Ribas-Casasayas (Editor), Amanda L. Petersen (Editor), María del Carmen Caña Jiménez (Contribution by), Edward M. Chauca (Contribution by), Megan Corbin (Contribution by)

Overview

Espectros is a compilation of original scholarly studies that presents the first volume-length exploration of the spectral in literature, film, and photography of Latin America, Spain, and the Latino diaspora. In recent decades, scholarship in deconstructionist "hauntology," trauma studies, affect in image theory, and a renewed interest in the Gothic genre, has given rise to a Spectral Studies approach to the study of narrative. Haunting, the spectral, and the effects of the unseen, carry a special weight in contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultures (referred to in the book as “Transhispanic cultures”), due to the ominous legacy of authoritarian governments and civil wars, as well as the imposition of the unseen yet tangible effects of global economics and neoliberal policies.

Ribas and Petersen’s detailed introductory analysis grounds haunting as a theoretical tool for literary and cultural criticism in the Transhispanic world, with an emphasis on the contemporary period from the end of the Cold War to the present. The chapters in this volume explore haunting from a diversity of perspectives, in particular engaging haunting as a manifestation of trauma, absence, and mourning. The editors carefully distinguish the collective, cultural dimension of historical trauma from the individual, psychological experience of the aftermath of a violent history, always taking into account unresolved social justice issues. The volume also addresses the association of the spectral photographic image with the concept of haunting because of the photograph’s ability to reveal a presence that is traditionally absent or has been excluded from hegemonic representations of society. The volume concludes with a series of studies that address the unseen effects and progressive deterioration of the social fabric as a result of a globalized economy and neoliberal policies, from the modernization of the nation-state to present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611487381
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	04/03/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	5.89(w) x 9.07(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Alberto Ribas-Casasayasis assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Santa Clara University.

Amanda L. Petersen is associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Literatures and affiliated faculty for the Latin American Studies and Gender Studies programs at the University of San Diego.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Theories of the Ghost in a Transhispanic Context by Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen

Part I. Ghostly Encounters: Haunted Histories
Chapeter 1: The Museum of Memory: Spectral Presences and Metaphoric Re-membering by Megan Corbin
Chapter 2: The Bright Future of the Ghost: Memory in the Work of Javier Marías by Isabel Cuñado
Chapter 3: The Spectrality of Political Violence: Exhuming Guatemala’s Haunted Past in Tanya Maria Barrientos’s Family Resemblance and Sylvia Sellers’s When The Ground Turns in its Sleep by Susana S. Martínez

Part II. The Persistence of Violence: Trauma as Haunting
Chapter 4: Apparitions and Absence: Spectrality in Contemporary Novels of the Disappeared
by Karen Wooley Martin
Chapter 5: The Literalization of Trauma’s Specter and the Problematization of Time in
Aparecidos by Charles St-Georges
Chapter 6: Phantom Children: Spectral Presences and the Violent Past in Two Films of Contemporary Spain by Sarah Thomas
Chapter 7: Fog Instead of Land: Spectral Topographies of Disappearancein Colombia’s Recent Literature and Film by Juliana Martínez

Part III. Still Images: The Living and the Dead
Chapter 8: Framing and Feeling Immigration: Haunting Visuality and Alterity in Ramito de hierbabuena by N. Michelle Murray
Chapter 9: Memento Mori: Photography and Narrative in Cristina Rivera Garza’s Nadie Me verá Llorar by Marta Sierra

Part IV. Invisible Hands: Specters of the Market Economy
Chapter 10: Cubagua’s Ghosts by Juan Pablo Lupi
Chapter 11: Portraits of the Walking Dead: Transgressing Genres and (In)visible Demographics in Maurice Echeverría by María del Carmen Caña Jiménez
Chapter 12: Haunting Capitalism: Biutiful, the Specter, and Fantasies of the Global Market
by Victoria L. Garrett and Edward M. Chauca
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen contribute critical readings of the ghostly in Transhispanic cultural production to spectral studies.. .. As investigations of the ghostly continue, this volume will provide valuable insight for future studies that can expand to other areas of Latin America, including the Caribbean. Alongside the insightful remarks of Ribas-Casasayas and Petersen, the chapters advance scholarly work on spectral studies, specifically in the sphere of Transhispanic contemporary cultural production.

Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea

To the growing list of studies on the horror genre we will need to add Alberto Ribas Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen’s Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives, a compilation of never-before published essays that posits itself as the “first volume-length exploration of the spectral in literature, film, and photography of Latin America, Spain, and the Latino diaspora.” Indeed it is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary study that presents the reader with an amalgam of works that show an inherent connection between differing art formats and to the horror of specters in our everyday waking—and sleeping—life.... In the end, this compilation goes beyond simply being a book dedicated to horror.... This collection leaves behind the recourse of a facile analysis of a tried-and-true (or widely recognized) horror text, instead choosing to offer a fresh take on the ways in which espectros can be a relevant and committed force in our daily existence.

Chasqui: Revista de Literature Latinoamericana

"Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature." So writes Flannery O’Connor in "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Her statement is now amplified well beyond the US South in the excellent essays collected in Espectros. They address recent Spanish and Latin American literature and film, and the instruction of their ghosts is less theological (as it was for O’Connor) than political and economic. Military and civilian violence has taken a terrible toll from Mexico to Guatemala and Salvador, from Colombia to Argentina, with Spain’s specters also appearing to give us instruction. Los desaparecidos [the disappeared] populate these essays, as do those who have died from economic oppression and its consequences: immigration, detention, corruption, abandonment. The collection as a whole considers how memory works to recover collective traumas, and how haunting is necessarily a part of this process. Ghosts are always figures of our essential displacement, whether spiritual or political, but their instruction is particularly urgent when they remind us of multiple human horrors. The essays in Espectros should be read by everyone interested in Latin America’s recent political past, and in the many ways that its literature and film, like ghosts, can "cast strange shadows."

Lois Parkinson Zamora

Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives is a unique and welcome collaboration, the cultural and geographical breadth of which is inspiring, and the theoretical aim of which is most timely and provocative.

Cincinnati Romance Review

Overall, Espectrosis a compelling and thought-provoking compilation of articles that serves both as an introduction to and an in-depth analysis of Transhispanicspectral studies.

Hispanofila

To the growing list of studies on the horror genre we will need to add Alberto Ribas Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen’s Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives, a compilation of never-before published essays that posits itself as the “first volume-length exploration of the spectral in literature, film, and photography of Latin America, Spain, and the Latino diaspora.” Indeed it is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary study that presents the reader with an amalgam of works that show an inherent connection between differing art formats and to the horror of specters in our everyday waking—and sleeping—life.... In the end, this compilation goes beyond simply being a book dedicated to horror.... This collection leaves behind the recourse of a facile analysis of a tried-and-true (or widely recognized) horror text, instead choosing to offer a fresh take on the ways in which espectros can be a relevant and committed force in our daily existence.

Chasqui: Revista de Literature Latinoamericana

Ultimately, this collection is a welcome contribution to its field, as it provides convincing summaries for some of the key aspects of theory relating to specters and brings together a number of intelligent articles that capture a noteworthy rise in themes of haunting among transhispanic narratives. It attempts to relay subtle distinctions in approaches to these concepts with no pretense of being the last word on the subject. Casting a wide net across both a theoretical and a territorial perspective, Espectros handles ghosts and specters just as they might demand, with respect and attention but without a sense of definitiveness or foreclosure.

Iberoamericana

Alberto Ribas-Casasayas and Amanda L. Petersen contribute critical readings of the ghostly in Transhispanic cultural production to spectral studies.. .. As investigations of the ghostly continue, this volume will provide valuable insight for future studies that can expand to other areas of Latin America, including the Caribbean. Alongside the insightful remarks of Ribas-Casasayas and Petersen, the chapters advance scholarly work on spectral studies, specifically in the sphere of Transhispanic contemporary cultural production.

Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea

A consistently illuminating collection of essays, Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives is the first critical anthology about the figure of the ghost and the aesthetic of haunting to focus on narrative, film, and photography produced in Latin America, Spain, and the Latino Diaspora.... A skillfully organized collection, this anthology represents a pioneering effort to explore a neglected arena in Transhispanic cultural studies. The authors of these twelve essays persuasively illustrate the relevance of studying the figure of the ghost in its many forms, challenging us to expand the scope of Hispanic Studies as a whole. Ribas-Casasayas and Petersen offer an important and influential anthology. Readable, thought-provoking, and at times deeply moving, Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives is an essential companion to any scholar working in Latin American, Latino, or Peninsular Studies who is interested in spectral criticism.

Hispania

The editors and authors of the remarkable collection Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives trace a spectral geography that connects the violent histories of Spain and Spanish America. This is an interesting lens through which to explore the use and aesthetics of haunting.. .. The body of writing compiled in Espectros allows readers to understand how trauma is woven into the very fabric of Hispanic history, on both sides of the Atlantic. However, these essays also help us consider ways of treating and moving forward with our conditions as subjects who are always and already haunted—of envisioning treatments of our collective pasts and presents that denote a greater and more meaningful sense of mutual respect and responsibility.

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos

The contributors provide welcome and pertinent insights into the ways in which transhispanic writers, artists, and directors have conceptualized historical and contemporary traumas.. . it will no doubt be a key text for years to come.

Folklore

The editors and authors of the remarkable collection Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives trace a spectral geography that connects the violent histories of Spain and Spanish America. This is an interesting lens through which to explore the use and aesthetics of haunting.. .. The body of writing compiled in Espectros allows readers to understand how trauma is woven into the very fabric of Hispanic history, on both sides of the Atlantic. However, these essays also help us consider ways of treating and moving forward with our conditions as subjects who are always and already haunted—of envisioning treatments of our collective pasts and presents that denote a greater and more meaningful sense of mutual respect and responsibility.

Revista de Estudios Hispánicos