Transnational Orientalisms in Contemporary Spanish and Latin American Cinema

In recent decades in Spain and Latin America, transnational voices, typically stereotyped, alienated or co-opted in the Western world, have been gaining increasing presence in cultural texts. The transnational representation of the “Oriental” subject, namely Arabs and Jews, Chinese and other ethnic groups that have migrated to Spain and Latin America either voluntarily or forcefully, is now being seen anew in both literature and cinema. This book explores Orientalism beyond literature, in which it has already garnered attention, to examine the new ways of seeing and interpreting both the Middle East and the East in contemporary films, in which many of the immigrants traditionally omitted from the dominant narratives are able to present the trauma, memories and violence of their exile and migration. As such, this volume explores the representation of those single and doubly marginalized groups in contemporary Spanish and Latin American cinema, analysing how films from Spain, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina portray transnational subjects from a wide spectrum of the “Orient” world, including Maghrebs from North Africa, and Palestinian, Jewish, Chinese, and Korean peoples. Once vulnerable to the dominant culture of their adopted homes, facing ostracism and marginalisation, these groups are now entering into the popular imagination and revised history of their new countries. This volume explores the following questions as starting points for its analysis: Are these manifestations the new orientalist normative, or are there other characterizations? Are new cinematic scopes and understandings being created? The old stereotypical orientalist ways of seeing these vulnerable groups are beginning to change to a more authentic representation, although, in some cases, they may still reside in the subtext of films.


Michele C. Dávila Gonçalves is an Associate Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures, and Chair of the World Languages and Cultures Department at Salem State University, Massachusetts, having taught as Visiting Professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. She received an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, and a PhD in Spanish from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include the bildungsroman/film, the detective novel, Latin American literature, and cultural studies. She is the author of El archivo de la memoria: la novela de formación femenina en Rosa Chacel, Rosa Montero, Rosario Castellanos y Elena Poniatowska (1999), and has published articles in books (Twenty-first Century Latin American Narrative and Postmodern Feminism), and journals such as Exégesis, Chasqui, Con-textos, Hipertexto, Tinkuy and the International Journal in Humanistic Studies and Literature.

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ISBN: 1-4438-8541-X

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-8541-6

Release Date: 10th February 2016

Pages: 150

Price: £41.99

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