Telling Ruins in Latin America / New Directions in Latino American Cultures (PDF)

MICHAEL J. LAZZARA is Assistant Professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of California, Davis, USA. VICKY UNRUH is Professor of Latin American literature and culture at the University of Kansas, USA.

"The twenty-one essays in this book are beautifully written, meticulously edited, and carefully intertwined. Telling Ruins in Latin America brings together a formidable list of scholars, artists, and thinkers from Latin America and the United States to think about ruins and the role of memory to portray modernity s failed versions of progress, and how Latin American vibrant cultural projects reshape the ruined landscape by facing and voicing its cracks and holes." - A Contracorriente

"Ruins theory has escaped the field of archeology (which is a very different case) to become an important emergent field of study internationally.Unruh and Lazzara's new project brings together a stellar list of top thinkers to offer critical Latin American voices to this burgeoning analytic category. Deftly inserting themselves into an international discussion associated with figures like Benjamin and Agamben, the authors of this collection take us on a fascinating journey through ancient and modern ruins, both physical and fictional." - Debra A. Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies and Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell University

"We have come to regard ruins as the master trope of a modernity that knows itself to be hollow. The present volume shows that cultural production in Latin America has always resided at the far side of that knowledge, and that its past and current incandescence derives not in small measure from an imaginary in which ruins play a most significant role - perhaps the leading one." - Carlos J. Alonso, Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Columbia University