Department of Spanish and Portuguese

My research explores intersections between literature, philosophy, and political thought in Spanish America. My first two books explored literary responses to problems associated with modernity and modernization in Spanish America. I look at novels, short stories, and poems as cultural artifacts that possess a double potentiality. On one hand, these works are records of historical experience that can generate insight into the struggles and contradictions of their time; on the other, they give shape to efforts to disrupt the spell of the present and to envision alternatives to the existing orders in which they are written. This double register requires that every literary text be treated both as an historical object informed by extra-literary contexts and as a self-referential gesture whose meaning is shaped by language and creative processes.

I am currently working on a project that examines new forms of conflict and violence in Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua) in contexts of narco-capitalism, gang violence, migration and flight. I am interested in exploring how the past (recent experiences of revolution, civil war and counter-insurgency as well as older colonial and imperial histories) contributes to shaping present-day conflicts, while also looking at how contemporary experiences pose challenges to established ways of thinking about social conflict and violence. In addition to literary works, I also look at journalism, film, and other visual media.

Book

• Literature and “Interregnum”: Globalization, War and the Subjugation of Sovereignty in Latin America. SUNY Press, 2016.
• The Catastrophe of Modernity: Tragedy and the Nation in Latin American Literature. Bucknell University Press, 2004.

Selected articles and book chapters

• “Thinking (Between) Metaphors: Heidegger, Derrida and the History of Metaphysics.” Under review, Política Común: A Journal of Thought.
• “Architectures of Totality: Structure, History and Polemos in Kafka and Borges.” Forthcoming, Yearbook of Comparative Literature.
• “Latin America and the World: Borges, Bolaño and the Inconceivable Universe.” Invited contribution to World Literature: Premises and Problems, ed. Luiza Moreira. Forthcoming, SUNY. 
• “The Allegorical Machine: Politics, History, and Memory in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El sueño del retorno.” Yearbook of Comparative Literature 61 (2017/2015): 174-201.  
• “Two Sides of the Same Coin? Form, Matter and Secrecy in Derrida, de Man and Borges.” The Marrano Spirit: Derrida and Hispanism, ed. Erin Graff-Zivin. Fordham University Press, 2017.
• “Hegemony in Latin America.” Invited contribution to The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies: A Metahistory of Material Practices of Power, eds. Alberto Moreiras and José Luis Villacañas. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. http://www.literatureencyclopedia.com/subscriber/ tocnode.html?id=g9781444334982_chunk_g978144433498212_ss1-7
• “Ayotzinapa: antes y después.” Horizontal (Mexico), 19 January 2016.
• “The desencuentros of history: Indianismo and Marxism in Bolivia.” Culture, Theory and Critique 56:3 (2015): 313-32.
• Ayotzinapa, ¿Un tema también de Estados Unidos?” CNN México. 2 December 2014. Web.
• “Literature and the Secret of the World: 2666, Globalization and Global War.” CR: The New Centennial Review 14:3 (Fall 2014): 139-61.
• “Aesthetics, Politics and Event: Borges’s ‘El fin’, the Argentine Tradition and Death.” CR: The New Centennial Review 14:1 (Spring 2014): 25-46.  
• “Critique of Critique.” Política común: A Journal of Thought 4 (2013). http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/12322227.0004.008?view=text;rgn=main
• “In the Wake of Tragedy: Citation, Gesture and Theatricality in Griselda Gambaro’s Antígona furiosa.” Invited contribution to special edition of Hispanic Issues Online, v.13, ed. Jennifer Duprey. University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 30pp. http://hispanicissues.umn.edu/WhoseVoiceisThisIberianandLatinAmericanAntigones.html
• “Literary Futures: Crime Fiction, Global Capitalism and the History of the Present in Ricardo Piglia’s Blanco nocturno.” Special edition of A Contracorriente on “The Generation of 1972: Latin America’s Forced Global Citizens,” eds. Sophia McClennen and Brantley Nicholson. 2013.
• “Territorios de la historia del presente y contratiempo literario en Boca de lobo.” In Sergio Chejfec: Trayectorias de una escritura, ed. Dianna Niebylski. Pittsburgh: International Institute of Iberoamerican Literature, 2012.
• “Postular las suposiciones: la razón, la acumulación originaria y el origen ausente de la historia del presente.” In Crítica de la acumulación: Acontecimiento, hegemonía, subalternidad y multitud: Las encrucijadas teóricas de América Latina. Santiago: Instituto Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Sociales, 2010.
• “The Night of the Senses: Literary (Dis)orders in Nocturno de Chile.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 18:2 (2009): 141-54. (Spanish language translation: “La noche de los sentidos: (Des)órdenes literarios en Nocturno de Chile.” Spanish translation of “The Night of the Senses” by María Julia de Ruschi. Invited contribution to Fuera de quicio: Bolaño en el tiempo de sus espectros, ed. Raúl Rodríguez Freire. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Prosa y Política,  2012.)  
• “Memory, Ethics and Politics in Post-dictatorship Argentina: La carta de Del Barco.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 17:3 (December 2008): 279-98.

• “The Latin American People: Politics, War and Thought”: An exploration of the often vexed interactions between political thought and social movements in Latin America, from post-independence to the present. The contexts I look at include: the origins of Peronism in Argentina; political violence of the 1960s and 70s and its aftermath; and the recent appearance populist anti-neoliberal regimes in South America. The project traces the emergence and conceptual-practical evolution of the national-popular in 20th century Latin America, culminating with the questions raised by the historical conjunction of neopopulism with globalization and “global war” (Carlo Galli).