Critique-a program of thought as well as a disposition toward the world-is a crucial resource for politics and thought today, yet it is again and again instrumentalized by institutional frames and captured by market logics. Technologies of Critique elaborates a critical practice that eludes such capture. Building on Chile's history of dissident artists and the central entangling of politics and aesthetics, Thayer engages continental philosophical traditions, from Aristotle, Descartes and Heidegger through Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, and in implicit conversation with the Judith Butler, Roberto Esposito, and Bruno Latour, to help pinpoint the technologies and media through which art intervenes critically in socio-political life.

Critique-a program of thought as well as a disposition toward the world-is a crucial resource for politics and thought today, yet it is again and again instrumentalized by institutional frames and captured by market logics. Technologies of Critique elaborates a critical practice that eludes such capture. Building on Chile's history of dissident artists and the central entangling of politics and aesthetics, Thayer engages continental philosophical traditions, from Aristotle, Descartes and Heidegger through Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze, and in implicit conversation with the Judith Butler, Roberto Esposito, and Bruno Latour, to help pinpoint the technologies and media through which art intervenes critically in socio-political life.

Capitalism and its Discontents presents a series of interpretative essays on a number of key modern and contemporary Latin American novels and films. The overarching theme in the essays is the relation between such textual materials and their regional contexts.

Carlos Monsivais is one of Latin America's most prescient and prolific social commentators. In this, the first English translation of his work, he presents an extraordinary chronicle of contemporary life south of the Rio Grande, which ranges over pop music, Latino hip hop, film stars such as Cantinflas and Dolores del Rio, the writer Juan Rulfo, life on the border with the United States, boleros and melodrama. Monsivais's chronicles are theoretically informed but are crammed with people rather than abstractions. They make points of deadly seriousness in a voice which is laconic, satirical and humorous, and which is often written in the register of his subjects. Monsivais draws on a deep understanding of Mexico's cultural histories-popular, mass and high-and notes the fascinating ways in which they interact to transform each other. The conflicts between Mexican and North American culture and between modern and traditional ways of life are constant themes of his investigations. A dazzling mixture of reportage, narrative and biting social criticism, Mexican Postcards is certain to establish Monsivais's rightful place in the pantheon of Latin America's greatest writers.