Cyborgs in Latin America

J. Andrew Brown is Associate Professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis.

"J. Andrew Brown has taken the generic image of the cyborg and has convincingly shown its specific political and cultural uses by Latin American writers and filmmakers. His nuanced reading of recent artistic production finds in very diverse texts a profoundly human posthuman, one in which the critique of neoliberal policies in the 1990s collides with the realities of postdictatorship society and the awareness of the wonders and dangers of new technologies. This wonderful book argues that when Latin American artists were dreaming of cyborgs, they were not escaping a troubled continent - they were actually addressing head on its most pressing social and political issues." - Edmundo Paz Soldan, Professor of Latin American Literature, Cornell University "Cyborgs in Latin America is a stunning book. Through J. Andrew Brown s engaging approach to film and narrative, the reader will discover the nuanced and complex relationships that stem from technology and metastasize into politics, media, economy, and gender in contemporary Latin America. Brown s profoundly researched text explores previously uncharted cartographies of hybrid identity and subjectivity in the region. Cyborgs in Latin America is a key contribution to Posthuman, Latin American, and Cultural Studies. Perhaps it can best be described in its own language: You hold a book, a prosthesis, an iron lung, and a much needed breath of fresh air." - Mike Wilson, author of El pugil and Zombie, and Assistant Professor, Facultad de Letras, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile "Brown s book examines the cultural manifestations of the impact of technology in Latin America, primarily in the twentieth, and now twenty-first centuries. This book is, to my knowledge, the most thorough, best organized, and by far the most insightful theorization of a specifically Latin American posthumanism. Because the book compares and contrasts North American, European, and Latin American theories and texts - everything from Blade Runner and The Matrix to McOndo and Borges 2.0 - it has a universal appeal in a field that expands daily as technological interventions become more and more common, touching everything from computers to genetic modifications of foods and people. Brown s study will be a primary source in tomorrow s literary, cultural, and scientific investigations. Brown s work will be of use to everyone from specialists to students." - Jerry Hoeg, Professor of Spanish, Pennsylvania State University

• Posthuman Porteños: Cyborg Survivors in Argentine Narrative and Film * Missing Gender: The Posthuman Feminine in Alicia Borinsky, Carmen Boullosa, and Eugenia Prado * Ripped Stitches: Mass Media and Televisual Imaginaries in Rafael Courtoisie's Narrative * Neoliberal Prosthetics in Post-dictatorial Argentina and Bolivia: Carlos Gamerro and Edmundo Paz Soldán * Video Heads and Rewound Bodies: Cyborg Memories in Rodrigo Fresán and Alberto Fuguet   A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org .