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These essays by critics, theorists and artists explore the allusive nexus of the dark in contemporary Mexican literature and visual culture. They chart the poetics of ?negrura-oscuridad' in creative media during decades of deepening crisis marked by the high-profile staging of atrocities, the re-emergence of an ironic noir aesthetic and the consolidation of forensically inspired art-making. In the wake of Walter Benjamin's ?unfinished' thinking structures, this volume operates through contiguous directions, transitions and regressions, incorporating images as part of the discussion of a ruinous visuality. Its polycentric mesh covers a wide range of art, writing, photography and film: from ritual uses of the ?darksome' and its legacies in pre-Hispanic cultures to colonial religious iconography of penitential blindness; from narco-noir in the novels of Roberto Bolaño and Yuri Herrera to techno-noir in dystopian border films; from the quotidian taxonomy of horror expurgated in art practice to the haunted ?other darkness' of the photographic blink. It also explores how we can contest the threat of dark ecology and ?horrorism' through sense expansion within new media and by positing fruitful blind spots in text and art.

The official centenary commemorating the Mexican Revolution of 1910 provided scholars with an opportunity to consider memorialization and its legacies and ‘afterimages’ in the twentieth century through to the present time. This collection of new essays, commissioned from experts based in Mexico, Europe and the United States, plays on the interrelated notions of ‘revisitation’, haunting, residual traces and valediction to interrogate the Revolution’s multiple appearances, reckonings and reconfigurations in art, photography, film, narrative fiction, periodicals, travel-testimonies and poetry, examining key constituencies of creative media in Mexico that have been involved in historicizing, contesting or evading the mixed legacies of the Revolution. The interplay of themes, practices and contexts across the chapters (ranging from the 1920s through to the present day) draws on interdisciplinary thinking as well as new findings, framing the volume’s discourse with a deliberately multi-dimensional approach to an often homogenized topic. The contributors’ scholarly referencing of artists, novelists, poets, photographers, foreign correspondents, critics, filmmakers and curators is detailed and wide-ranging, creating new juxtapositions that include some rarely studied material.

My dissertation constitutes a descriptive and interpretative analysis of modern and contemporary artistic practices in Honduras. This analysis is carried out comparatively, contrasting mainly the formative decades of Honduran modernism' (1920s-40s) against the last 15 years of artistic production. Along this diachronic strategy, my interpretation of these processes is anchored in detailed accounts of the socio-historical durations that bear upon them. For each case, at least one case study is developed thoroughly, elucidating thus the dialectic entwinement of art and history. For such purpose, the modes of production and reception entailed by the practices of Arturo López Rodezno (active 1940s-1960s) and Lucy Argueta (active 2005-present) are read in close relation to the social historical processes in which they are incrusted. It thus becomes apparent how some practices, like that of López Rodezno, deny social history and contemporary realities, and others, like that Argueta, prompt participation in making sense of contemporary history, even while artists are too diffident or market-oriented to openly acknowledge meaning.'

chapter in The Ghosts of the Mexican Revolution, (ed. Erica Segre), Peter Lang.

Buñuels heresies has a more direct and inmediate resonance in the post revolutionary irreverence of literary circles dominated by Octavio paz and Carlos Fuentes on his contemporaries in the mexicans film industry. 1946 the year of Buñuels arrival, marks the systematization of decades of obligatory polemic and foundational iniciatives concerning la mexicanidad and its cultural prerogatives. An attentive review of his output suggest that Buñuel did not fly a flag of convenience when he adopted Mexican Citizenship. Even his earliest films manifest a genuine receptivity to the realities of his adpted home, rather than a merely passive reproduction of established Mexican genres., As heresías de Buñuel tem uma resonância mais direta e imediata na irreverencia post revolucionaria de círculos literários dominados por Octavio Paz e Carlos Fuentesthan sobre seus contemporâneos na indústria do cinema Mexicano. 1946, ano de chegada de Buñuel a México, marca a sistematização de décadas de polêmica obligatória e iniciativas de fundação aludindo à mexicanidade e suas culturas prerrogativas. Uma revisão tentativa da sua produção total sugere que Buñuel não fez flamear uma bandeira de conveniência quando adotou a cidadania mexicana. Até seus primeiros filmes se revela uma receptividade genuína à realidades de sua casa adotiva, bastante mais que uma reprodução meramente passiva dos gêneros mexicanos estabelecidos., Las herejías de Buñuel tienen una resonancia más directa e inmediata en la irreverencia post revolucionaria de círculos literarios dominados por Octavio Paz y Carlos Fuentest sobre sus contemporáneos en la industria fílmica Mejicana. 1946, año de la llegada de Buñuel a México, marca la sistematización de décadas de polémica obligatoria e iniciativas fundacionales refiriéndose a la mejicanidad y sus culturas prerrogativas. Una revisión tentativa de su producción total sugiere que Buñuel no hizo flamear una bandera de conveniencia cuando adoptó la ciudadanía mejicana. Hasta sus primeros films se manifiesta una receptividad genuina a la realidades de su casa adoptiva, bastante más que una reproducción meramente pasiva de los géneros Mejicanos establecidos.