Utopia and Neoliberalism in Latin American Cinema (PDF)

The topic of the crisis and recovery of utopia, at both a global and regional level, stands out in these melancholic times in which the capitalist era can no longer legitimize itself as an irreplaceable form of social existence. This book reflects upon the place of utopia, moving from classic Greece to the neoliberal era, specifically as manifested in Latin America. It studies utopia as a political and literary device for paradigmatic changes. As such, it links with the literary mode of the travelogue and its supporting role in the consolidation and perpetuation of the modern/colonial discourse. The book reviews critical approaches to modernity and postmodernity as a philosophical enquiry on the role of symbolic languages, particularly the one played by the image and the theories of representation and performance. With that, and by using decolonialist theory to inform an audio-visual text analysis, it contributes to film philosophy with a model of analysis for Latin American cinema: namely, "the allegory of the motionless traveler". This model states that Latin America millennial cinema possesses a significant aesthetic-political power achieved by enacting a process of utopic re-narration. This book will appeal to students and academics in the humanities and social sciences and readers interested in film culture, as well as those searching specifically for new perspectives on socio-symbolic decolonialist dynamics operating at the crossroads of cultural politics and political culture in Latin America.