BAS editor Nathanial Gardner
Theory often goes hand in hand with the study of literature and film. Sometimes this is literary theory, sometimes it is film theory, sometimes theory from another field is also applied to our area of study. The humanities allow a range of flexibility in this sense that other areas might not. This can be extremely useful and can enable some truly innovative work when it comes to analysing texts.
Classes on literary or film theory often start by taking one book or film and then reading it from that angle to show how a variety of analytical tools can provide different viewpoints onto one particular work.
A friend once told me how his teacher used Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo as a base from which to show his students how over fifteen completely different approaches from literary theory could be used to crack open that classic Mexican text in different ways. When I took the same course a few years later, I read Marta Traba’s Conversación al sur (a highly recommendable novel on fear and terror during the military regimes found in the Southern Cone in the latter half of the 20th century).
You might be asking if some of those theoretical readings on that one novel might have felt a bit forced. In some cases, they were. However, to a certain extent, that was the point. While many theorical approaches can be applied to different visual and written texts, not all are the most adequate. You must find what works best. If not, it won’t really work to your (and others’) satisfaction.
This leads me to my next point. I have noticed for a long time that many well written, highly engaging, impeccably researched critical studies on Latin American literature and photography engaged much less with literary or visual theory than their counterparts in the Global North. I had observed this repeatedly, but had never really given much thought to the reasons behind it until I was undertaking the research for my recent book The Study of Photography in Latin America. While writing it I spoke with many experts on Latin American photography, and one of the points I discovered was that while the experts were well acquainted with visual theory, most did not reference it because they did not feel it was relevant to their work on the Global South. In fact, several pointed out that they felt that these ideas (mostly derived from research done in the USA and Western Europe) were interesting and relevant, but were probably not written with the Global South in mind.
In retrospect, this was a simple and unsurprising explanation of a trend I had noticed many years ago. However, hearing it explained to me so plainly invited a second question: why isn’t there any visual theory from the Global South written for studying the Global South?
The truth is, there is. You just have the know where to look for it.
The writing of theory for the Global South is a growing field. To that end, I have been working with researchers in the UK, France, and across Latin America to identify what visual theory is being written in the Global South about the Global South. Our labours have yielded some positive results, the first of which we expect to publish in Mexico in the near future (more details to come!). This project draws on expertise from across Latin America, the aim being to provide tools from the Global South for working on the Global South. It is a promising endeavour that will bring new insights.
Just as my literary theory teacher taught when applying so many theories to that one Marta Traba novel, some ideas generate more fruitful discussion than others. Our mission, as students of such texts, is to gain enough experience to know which ones work best, even if that means looking beyond the standard answers to find better ones.
Doing so should help our experience be even more fruitful and our outputs all the more relevant.
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 