Vision Technology And Subjectivity In Mexican Cyberpunk Literature

Vision, Technology and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature interrogates an array of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico whose themes engage directly with visual technologies and the subjectivities they help produce - all published during and influenced by the country's neoliberal era. This book argues that television, computers, and smartphones and the literary narratives that treat them all correspond to separate-yet-overlapping scopic regimes within the country today. Amidst the shifts occurring in the country's field of vision during this period, the authors of these cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk narratives imagine how these devices contribute to producing specular subjects-or subjects who are constituted in large measure by their use and interaction with visual technologies. In doing so, they repeatedly recur to the posthuman figure of the cyborg in order to articulate these changes; Stephen C. Tobin therefore contends that the literary cyborg becomes a discursive site for working through the problematics of sight in Mexico during the globalized era. In all, these "specular fictions" represent an exceptional tendency within literary expression-especially within the cyberpunk genre-that grapples with themes and issues regarding the nature of vision being increasingly mediated by technology.

Vision, Technology and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature interrogates an array of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico whose themes engage directly with visual technologies and the subjectivities they help produce – all published during and influenced by the country’s neoliberal era. This book argues that television, computers, and smartphones and the literary narratives that treat them all correspond to separate-yet-overlapping scopic regimes within the country today. Amidst the shifts occurring in the country’s field of vision during this period, the authors of these cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk narratives imagine how these devices contribute to producing specular subjects—or subjects who are constituted in large measure by their use and interaction with visual technologies. In doing so, they repeatedly recur to the posthuman figure of the cyborg in order to articulate these changes; Stephen C. Tobin therefore contends that the literary cyborg becomes a discursive site for working through the problematics of sight in Mexico during the globalized era. In all, these “specular fictions” represent an exceptional tendency within literary expression—especially within the cyberpunk genre—that grapples with themes and issues regarding the nature of vision being increasingly mediated by technology.

This volume explores how Latin American and Latinx creators have engaged science fiction to explore posthumanist thought. Contributors reflect on how Latin American and Latinx speculative art conceptualizes the operations of other, non-human forms of agency, and engages in environmentalist theory in ways that are estranging and open to new forms of species companionship. Essays cover literature, film, TV shows, and music, grouped in three sections: “Posthumanist Subjects” examines Latin(x) American iterations of some of the most common figurations of the posthuman, such as the cyborg and virtual environments and selves; “Slow Violence and Environmental Threats” understands that posthumanist meditations in the hemisphere take place in a material and cultural context shaped by the catastrophic destruction of the environment; the chapters in “Posthumanist Others” shows how the reimagination of the self and the world that posthumanism offers may be an opportunity to break the hold that oppressive systems have over the ways in which societies are constructed and governed.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,5, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore the intersection of the human body with technology and to demonstrate that cyborgs in fiction are often represented as the ethnic others and act as metaphors for experiences of ethnicity for whom social, cultural, economic or other forces matter. Gender and identity of fictitious cyborgs are the major points of analysis that will be explored within critical race theory, globalization and Asian American Studies. This paper also highlights that Neuromancer reveals the contrast between pre-technological imagery of powerless and vulnerable ethnic bodies in comparison to superior white bodies modified with new technology. Ghost in the Shell, in contrast, points to the technological power of the ethnic bodies that give them strength to liberate themselves from the white dominant discourse. Salt Fish Girl’s biopolitics emphasizes the biological power of the ethnic bodies offering alternative bodily possibilities beyond the technological and the artificial ones. This work also reveals that Neuromancer establishes clear distinctions between the dominant and subordinate, the technological and organic, the self and the other, whereas Ghost in the Shell and Salt Fish Girl blur these distinctions. Besides, this paper also explores the impact of technology on a cyborg’s identity and subjectivity. As Alex Goody suggests: “any identity of a human being lies beyond its physical continuity” (153). In other words, cyborgs in fiction often speculate on possible outcomes of creating technological humans. The cyborgs are able to reveal hopes and anxieties concerning the fusion of technology and biology and to get into the conflict or disunity between their bodies, minds, and souls. The cyborgs are also often emotionally troubled by their memories that can be made prosthetic, false or be erased. This paper also reveals the ambiguous nature of technology because it can devalue and objectify the bodies or give them strength and empowerment. The concluding part of this paper reveals the role of East Asia in speculative fiction and the role of Internet technology for Asian American ethnicity and the representation of the cyborg body online. Cyberspace may also be associated with inaccurate representations of the ethnic bodies. The selected works limit the discussion of this paper to Chinese and Japanese people and culture in the West.

This book discusses the work of Josâe Vasconcelos, Diego Rivera, Josâe Clemente Orozco, Emilio "El Indio" Fernâandez, El Santo, and Carlos Olvera. These artists--and many others--held diametrically opposed worldviews and used very different media while producing works during different decades. Nevertheless, each of these artists posited the fusion of the body with technology as key to forming an "authentic," Mexican identity.

Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

The first-ever collection of Latin American science fiction in English.