Across a broad spectrum of media, markets, and national contexts, self-reflexivity continues to be a favored narrative mode with wide ranging functions. In this book Amago argues that, in addition to making visible industry and production concerns within the film text, reflexive aesthetics have a cartographic function that serves to map the place of a film (geographic and cultural) within the global cinemascape, and thus to bring into sharper relief images of the national. Focusing on films in the contemporary Spanish context that in some way reflect back on themselves and the processes of their own production, that purposefully blur the distinction between reality and fiction, or that draw attention to the various modes of cinematic exhibition and reception, Amago proposes ways in which these movies can be employed to understand Spanish national cinemas today as imbedded within a dynamic global system.

Across a broad spectrum of media, markets, and national contexts, self-reflexivity continues to be a favored narrative mode with wide ranging functions. In this book Amago argues that, in addition to making visible industry and production concerns within the film text, reflexive aesthetics have a cartographic function that serves to map the place of a film (geographic and cultural) within the global cinemascape, and thus to bring into sharper relief images of the national. Focusing on films in the contemporary Spanish context that in some way reflect back on themselves and the processes of their own production, that purposefully blur the distinction between reality and fiction, or that draw attention to the various modes of cinematic exhibition and reception, Amago proposes ways in which these movies can be employed to understand Spanish national cinemas today as imbedded within a dynamic global system.

What makes trash trash? How do we decide what to throw away? Driven by these questions and others, Samuel Amago takes us through the streets and alleys of Spain, sorting through recycling bins, libraries, social media, bookstores, and message boards in search of things that have been forgotten, jettisoned, forsaken. Ranging in topic from the transformation of urban space during the transition to democracy to a twenty-first-century sanitation strike that paralyzed Madrid for weeks, from the films of Pedro Almodovar to graphic novels about Spain's housing crisis, Basura presents an alternative story of contemporary Spanish culture through the lens of wasted things.Not merely an environmental problem, the proliferation of trash is an indicator of the social, political, and economic processes that undergird late, neoliberal capitalism. In chapters on cinema, photography, archaeology, drawing, comics, literature, ecology, and urban design, Amago places waste objects into dialogue with the cultural practices and structures of power that have produced them. Drawing from archaeological, ecocritical, and new materialist approaches, Amago argues that discards possess agency and generate an array of effects. Just as trash never fully disappears but returns to haunt its creators, so history never vanishes despite being buried or ignored by official narratives. Basura considers the efforts of artists, writers, and designers for whom waste is a means to withstand cultural erasure.

What makes trash trash? How do we decide what to throw away? Driven by these questions and others, Samuel Amago takes us through the streets and alleys of Spain, sorting through recycling bins, libraries, social media, bookstores, and message boards in search of things that have been forgotten, jettisoned, forsaken. Ranging in topic from the transformation of urban space during the transition to democracy to a twenty-first-century sanitation strike that paralyzed Madrid for weeks, from the films of Pedro Almodovar to graphic novels about Spain's housing crisis, Basura presents an alternative story of contemporary Spanish culture through the lens of wasted things.Not merely an environmental problem, the proliferation of trash is an indicator of the social, political, and economic processes that undergird late, neoliberal capitalism. In chapters on cinema, photography, archaeology, drawing, comics, literature, ecology, and urban design, Amago places waste objects into dialogue with the cultural practices and structures of power that have produced them. Drawing from archaeological, ecocritical, and new materialist approaches, Amago argues that discards possess agency and generate an array of effects. Just as trash never fully disappears but returns to haunt its creators, so history never vanishes despite being buried or ignored by official narratives. Basura considers the efforts of artists, writers, and designers for whom waste is a means to withstand cultural erasure.

Unearthing Franco's Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain addresses the political, cultural, and historical debate that has ensued in Spain as a result of the recent discovery and exhumation of mass graves dating from the years during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The victor, General Francisco Franco, ruled as a dictator for thirty-six years, during which time he and his supporters had thousands of political dissidents or suspects and their families systematically killed and buried in anonymous mass graves. Although Spaniards living near the burial sites realized what was happening, the conspiracy of silence imposed by the Franco regime continued for many years after his death in 1975 and after the establishment of a democratic government. While the people of Germany, France, and Italy have confronted the legacies of the repressive regimes that came to power in those countries during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, the unearthing of the anonymous dead in Spain has focused attention on how Spaniards have only recently begun to revisit their past and publicly confront Franco's legacy. The essays by historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, journalists, and cultural analysts gathered here represent the first interdisciplinary analysis of how present-day Spain has sought to come to terms with the violence of Franco's regime. Their contributions comprise an important example of how a culture critiques itself while mining its collective memory.