Seeing politics otherwise
Subtitle: vision in Latin American and Iberian fiction
By: Patrícia Vieira
Series: University of Toronto romance series; University of Toronto romance series (Unnumbered)
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9781442642997
Subjects: Motion pictures; Art; Latin American literature; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Portuguese fiction; Blindness in motion pictures; Blindness in literature; Vision in motion pictures; Latin American fiction; Vision in literature; Political aspects; Portuguese literature; Political violence in literature; Political violence in motion pictures
Description: "When confronting twentieth-century political oppression and violence, writers and artists in Portugal and South America have often emphasized the complex relationship between freedom and tyranny. In Seeing Politics Otherwise, Patricia Vieira uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the interrelation of politics and representations of vision and blindness in Latin American and Iberian literature, film, and art.

Vieira's discussion focuses on three literary works: Graciliano Ramos's Memoirs of Prison, Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, and José Saramago's Blindness, with supplemental analyses of sculpture and film by Ana Maria Pacheco, Bruno Barreto, and Marco Bechis. These artists use metaphors of blindness to denounce the totalizing gaze of dictatorial regimes. Rather than equating blindness with deprivation, Vieira argues that shadows, blindfolds, and blindness are necessary elements for re-imagining the political world and re-acquiring a political voice. Seeing Politics Otherwise offers a compelling analysis of vision and its forcible deprivation in the context of art and political protest."--pub. desc.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [177]-190) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Shadows of vision; title: 1. At the blink of an eye : vision, ethics, and politics; title: 2. Darkness and the animal in Graciliano Ramos's Memórias do cárcere (Memoirs of prison); title: 3. Twists of the blindfold in art, fiction, and film; title: 4. The reason of vision : variations on subjectivity in José Saramago's Ensaio sobre a cegueira (Blindness).