Title: Seeing politics otherwise
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.
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, Latin american fiction, history and criticism, Portuguese fiction, history and criticism, Politics and literature, Motion pictures, political aspects, Motion pictures, latin america, Art, political aspects, Art, latin american
Places: Latin America
People: José Saramago, Graciliano Ramos (1892-1953)
Time periods: 20th century