A wide range of essays which provide new conceptualizations of popular culture while linking it to both its long history and some of its most exciting contemporary forms. Popular culture has always represented a fulcrum within social, cultural and anthropological discourses in Latin America. Often imagined as representing a challenge to the dominant cultural paradigms of the "lettered city", it has repeatedly been mapped onto political, economic and even libidinal boundaries - between country and city, between folk and street, between the "masses" and elite national/political structures. Yet at the turn of the 21st century, concepts such as the "folk", the "popular", the "mass" and the "multitude" have exploded in the face of new cultural and informational technologies, putting cinematic, televisual and cybernetic manifestations of popular cultureat the forefront of social processes. In order to address the fragile contemporaneity of popular culture in Latin America, the essays in this collection engage with a wide range of cultural phenomena, from forms of mass political experience in the Colonial and Independence periods, to the modern-day emergence of street art, blogs, comic books and television, as well as the recycling of refuse as art, the marketing of santeria to tourists, and the filming of poverty in the favela. In so doing, they explore the diverse regimes of affect that both sustain and destabilize national symbolic orders, and chart the novel mediations between the national and the global in a see-sawingclimate of conflicting economic and political ideologies. Geoffrey Kantaris is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Rory O'Bryen is a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Contributors: Francisco Ortega, Joanna Page, Stephen Hart, Erica Segre, Jesus Martin Barbero, Lucia Sa, Chandra Morrison, Claire Taylor, Andrea Noble, Ed King.

Featuring twenty-five key essays from the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (Traves/sia), this book surveys the most influential themes and concepts, as well as scouring some of the polemics and controversies, which have marked the field over the last quarter of a century since the Journal's foundation in 1992. Emerging at a moment of crisis of revolutionary narratives, and at the onset of neoliberal economics and emergent narcopolitics, the cultural studies impetus in Latin America was part of an attempted intellectual reconstruction of the (centre-) left in terms of civil society, and the articulation of social movements and agencies, thinking beyond the verticalist constructions from previous decades. This collection maps these developments from the now classical discussions of the 'cultural turn' to more recent responses to the challenges of biopolitics, affect theory, posthegemony and ecocriticism. It also addresses novel political constellations including resurgent national-popular or eco-nativist and indigenous agencies. Framed by a critical introduction from the editors, this volume is both a celebration of influential essays published over twenty five years of the Journal and a representative overview of the field in its multiple ramifications, entrenchments and exchanges.

Featuring twenty-five key essays from the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (Traves/sia), this book surveys the most influential themes and concepts, as well as scouring some of the polemics and controversies, which have marked the field over the last quarter of a century since the Journal's foundation in 1992. Emerging at a moment of crisis of revolutionary narratives, and at the onset of neoliberal economics and emergent narcopolitics, the cultural studies impetus in Latin America was part of an attempted intellectual reconstruction of the (centre-) left in terms of civil society, and the articulation of social movements and agencies, thinking beyond the verticalist constructions from previous decades. This collection maps these developments from the now classical discussions of the 'cultural turn' to more recent responses to the challenges of biopolitics, affect theory, posthegemony and ecocriticism. It also addresses novel political constellations including resurgent national-popular or eco-nativist and indigenous agencies. Framed by a critical introduction from the editors, this volume is both a celebration of influential essays published over twenty five years of the Journal and a representative overview of the field in its multiple ramifications, entrenchments and exchanges.

Memory and mourning in Colombia. This book provides the first in-depth examination of a representative range of contemporary Colombian cultural engagements with the conflicts known simply as La Violencia that began in Colombia in the late 1940s. These include Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal's now classic revision of the 'novela de la Violencia', the autobiographical cycle of acclaimed author Fernando Vallejo, versions of the testimonio by Alfredo Molano and internationally renowned novelist Laura Restrepo, as well as cinematic works by Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina. These cultural icons, many of whom are remarkably understudied, show how the heterogeneity of social and cultural processes condensed in La Violencia demands a deconstruction of 'violence' in Colombian culture. This argument is developed in dialogue with European and Latin American cultural theory and contributes to theoretical debates surrounding issues of memory and mourning developed in other Latin American contexts. The narratives explored in this book provide alternatives to abstract historicism and show us how to imagine ways out of deeply rooted cycles of violence. Yet their insistence on haunting and spectres signals the problems besetting the task of mourning in Colombia, positing history rather than psychology as a remainder that troubles efforts to forge collective memories and enact social reconciliation. RORY O'BRYEN lectures in Latin American literature and culture at the University of Cambridge.