Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema (SUNY series in Latin American Cinema)

Sheds light on emergent Latin America cinema that addresses the politics of environmental destruction, the uneveness of climate change consequences, and new ways of visualizing the world beyond the human. Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema brings together fourteen scholars to analyze Latin American cinema in dialogue with recent theories of posthumanism and ecocriticism. Together they grapple with how Latin American filmmakers have attempted to “push past the human,” and destabilize the myth of anthropocentric exceptionalism that has historically been privileged by cinema and has led to the current climate crisis. While some chapters question the very nature of this enterprise―whether cinema should or even could actualize such a maneuver beyond the human―others signal the ways in which the category of the “human” itself is interrogated by Latin American cinema, revealed to be a fiction that excludes more than it unifies. This volume explores how the moving image reinforces or contests the division between human and nonhuman, and troubles the settler epistemic partition of culture and nature that is at the core of the climate crisis. As the first volume to specifically address how such questions are staged by Latin American cinema, this book brings together analysis of films that respond to environmental degradation, as well as those that articulate a posthumanist ethos that blurs the line between species. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Latin American Cinema Beyond the Human The Anthropocene and Latin America Cinema of Nature, the Nature of Cinema Greening Latin American Cinema Chapter Outlines Notes Works Cited Genre Beyond the Human 1. Movies on the Move: Filming the Amazon Rainforest Amazonian Road Movies as Ecocinema In the Land of the Amazons Iracema: An Amazonian Love Affair Embrace of the Serpent Notes Works Cited 2. Visualizing the Geosphere: The 1985 Earthquake in Mexican Cinema Notes Works Cited 3. Revisiting Nature and Documenting the Americas: From Alexander von Humboldt to the Contemporary Latin American Documentary Notes Works Cited 4. Slow Violence in the Slow Cinema of Lisandro Alonso Pushing Past Nature, Protagonizing Nature: Slow Violence in Slow Cinema Pushing Past the Human, Protagonizing Humans: Uninhabitants of Ecological Margins Conclusion: A Decolonial, Bioecological Option Notes Works Cited Encountering Difference 5. Humanimal Assemblages: Slaughters in Latin American Left-Wing Cinema Left-Wing Reports from Latin America The Aesthetics of Drought: Benacerraf, Pereira dos Santos, Rocha Slaughterhouse Pedagogy: Ríos, Solanas, Getino, Gleyzer By Way of Conclusion: Nonhuman Animal Lines of Flight Notes Works Cited 6. Reordering Material Hierarchies in Jossie Malis Álvarez’s Animated Series, Bendito Machine Environmental Animation Latin American Animation and Bendito Machine OOO and Environmental Animation Bendito Machine: “Obey His Commands,” “Fuel the Machine,” “Pull the Trigger” Notes Works Cited 7. Mapping Queer Natures in Papu Curotto’s Esteros Notes Works Cited 8. Counterflows: Hydraulic Order and Residual Ecologies in Caribbean Fantasy Landscapes Flows, Frictions, Leakages Caribbean Fantasy as Nation Brand Caribbean Fantasy Gone Adrift Conclusions Notes Works Cited 9. Differential Viscosities: The Material Hermeneutics of Blood, Oil, and Water in Crude and The Blood of Kouan Kouan The Ethics of Misrepresentation Toxicity and the Porosity of Spectatorship Material Hermeneutics and the Cosmopolitics of the Viscous Image Notes Works Cited Screening the Pluriverse 10. Human Rights at the End of the World: Patricio Guzmán and the “Imperative to Reimagine the Planet” Notes Work Cited 11. Sea Turtles and Seascapes: Representing Human-Nature Relations in the Central American Caribbean Central America and Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century Film and Environment: Between Tourism and Activism Neoliberal Subjects: The Characterization of People and Nature Concluding Remarks Notes Works Cited 12. Refracting Lenses on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: Documenting Social Ecologies and Biospheres in El ojo del tiburón and El canto de Bosawas Notes Works Cited 13. The Sacred Space of Motoapohua: Intercorporeal Animality and National Subjectivities in Nicolás Echevarría’s Eco de la montaña Notes Works Cited 14. Undisciplined Knowledge: Indigenous Activism and Decapitation Resistance Notes Works Cited Contributors Index Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema brings together fourteen scholars to analyze Latin American cinema in dialogue with recent theories of posthumanism and ecocriticism. Together they grapple with how Latin American filmmakers have attempted to ?push past the human,? and destabilize the myth of anthropocentric exceptionalism that has historically been privileged by cinema and has led to the current climate crisis. While some chapters question the very nature of this enterprise - whether cinema should or even could actualize such a maneuver beyond the human - others signal the ways in which the category of the ?human? itself is interrogated by Latin American cinema, revealed to be a fiction that excludes more than it unifies. This volume explores how the moving image reinforces or contests the division between human and nonhuman, and troubles the settler epistemic partition of culture and nature that is at the core of the climate crisis. As the first volume to specifically address how such questions are staged by Latin American cinema, this book brings together analysis of films that respond to environmental degradation, as well as those that articulate a posthumanist ethos that blurs the line between species __Sheds light on emergent Latin America cinema that addresses the politics of environmental destruction, the uneveness of climate change consequences, and new ways of visualizing the world beyond the human.____Pushing Past the Human in Latin American Cinema__ Edited By Carolyn Fornoff And Gisela Heffes. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Electronic Reproduction. Ann Arbor, Mi Available Via World Wide Web.