This book emphasizes the significance of affects, feelings and emotions in how we think about politics, gender and sexuality in Latin America. Considering the complex and even contradictory social processes that the region is experiencing today, many Latin American authors are turning to affect to find a key to understand our present situation, to revisit our history, and to imagine new possibilities for the future. This tendency has shown such a specificity and sometimes departure from northern productions that it compels us to focus more deeply on its own arguments, methods, and critical contributions. This volume features essays that explore the particularities of Latin American ways of thinking about affect and how they can shed new light into our understanding of, gender, sexuality and politics.

This book emphasizes the significance of affects, feelings and emotions in how we think about politics, gender and sexuality in Latin America. Considering the complex and even contradictory social processes that the region is experiencing today, many Latin American authors are turning to affect to find a key to understand our present situation, to revisit our history, and to imagine new possibilities for the future. This tendency has shown such a specificity and sometimes departure from northern productions that it compels us to focus more deeply on its own arguments, methods, and critical contributions. This volume features essays that explore the particularities of Latin American ways of thinking about affect and how they can shed new light into our understanding of, gender, sexuality and politics.

The origin of Sexual Violence in the Argentinean Crimes against Humanity Trials: Rethinking Victimhood can be found in the resistance that, using a traditional feminist perspective, alleges that testimonies of sexual violence in the context of Argentinian crimes against humanity trials inevitably re-victimize victims. It is our understanding that such interpretation not only forgets to pay attention to what victims have to say about their experiences but also bases its allegation on dualistic and patronizing conceptions of female agency. This book argues that the role of affect in the experiences of those women who decided to testify as well of those who refused to do it shows to be a useful tool in order to analyze the sexual violence issue from a thought-provoking and heterodox perspective. Cecilia Macon presents her argument through philosophical debates paired with testimonies of victims and analysis of works of art devoted to express these problems. Recommended for scholars of Latin American studies, philosophy, history, and sociology.