Visible Borders, Invisible Economies
Living Death in Latinx Narratives
Published on 22. November 2022
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-1-4773-2601-5 (ISBN)
Description
2023 Outstanding Book Award, National Association for Ethnic Studies
A thorough examination of the political and economic exploitation of Latinx subjects, migrants, and workers through the lens of Latinx literature, photography, and film.
Globalization in the United States can seem paradoxical: free trade coincides with fortification of the southern border, while immigration is reimagined as a national-security threat. US politics turn aggressively against Latinx migrants and subjects even as post-NAFTA markets become thoroughly reliant on migrant and racialized workers. But in fact, there is no incongruity here. Rather, anti-immigrant politics reflect a strategy whereby capital uses specialized forms of violence to create a reserve army of the living, laboring dead.
Visible Borders, Invisible Economies turns to Latinx literature, photography, and films that render this unseen scheme shockingly vivid. Works such as Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends and Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer crystallize the experience of Latinx subjects and migrants subjugated to social death, their political existence erased by disenfranchisement and racist violence while their bodies still toil in behalf of corporate profits. In Kristy L. Ulibarri's telling, art clarifies what power obscures: the national-security state performs anti-immigrant and xenophobic politics that substitute cathartic nationalism for protections from the free market while ensuring maximal corporate profits through the manufacture of disposable migrant labor.
A thorough examination of the political and economic exploitation of Latinx subjects, migrants, and workers through the lens of Latinx literature, photography, and film.
Globalization in the United States can seem paradoxical: free trade coincides with fortification of the southern border, while immigration is reimagined as a national-security threat. US politics turn aggressively against Latinx migrants and subjects even as post-NAFTA markets become thoroughly reliant on migrant and racialized workers. But in fact, there is no incongruity here. Rather, anti-immigrant politics reflect a strategy whereby capital uses specialized forms of violence to create a reserve army of the living, laboring dead.
Visible Borders, Invisible Economies turns to Latinx literature, photography, and films that render this unseen scheme shockingly vivid. Works such as Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends and Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer crystallize the experience of Latinx subjects and migrants subjugated to social death, their political existence erased by disenfranchisement and racist violence while their bodies still toil in behalf of corporate profits. In Kristy L. Ulibarri's telling, art clarifies what power obscures: the national-security state performs anti-immigrant and xenophobic politics that substitute cathartic nationalism for protections from the free market while ensuring maximal corporate profits through the manufacture of disposable migrant labor.
Reviews / Votes
Ulibarri offers a model for reading other Latinx literature in the context of rising immigrant detentions . . . The interplay of border visibility and economic invisibility reveals a politically charged truth about the disposability of immigrant life hidden within the auspices of border/national security. Further, these truths are visible in the imagined world of art be it prose, photography, or film. (Latin@ Literatures) Ubarri's analysis of Latinx narratives...is expansive and illuminating...The book's strength is its uncompromisingly interdisciplinary approach, which is essential for understanding contemporary migration narratives. (Journal of Borderland Studies) Ulibarri's textured readings...illuminate the hidden economy elided by mainstream immigration discourse...[and her] frame of necropolitics bridges Latinx criticism to related concepts from fields of queer, Black, and affect theory. (Western American Literature) Challenging conventional perspectives and misconceptions, Visible Borders, Invisible Economies redefines the Latinx subject as a formidable force. Ulibarri understands the United States' economic dependence on migrant labor and confronts the legislative barriers that hinder opportunities for Latinx people. However, the book's analysis goes beyond historical, political, and economic aspects, positioning them as supplements tothe Latinx narratives in literature, photography, and film. Rather than presenting a unilateral perspective on Latinx agency and biopower, the book highlights the reciprocal dependence between the United States and migrant communities. (Aztlan)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Austin, TX
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
18 b&w photos; one 8-page color insert
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
594 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4773-2601-5 (9781477326015)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Kristy L. Ulibarri is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Imagination in the Age of National Security and Market Neoliberalization
Part I. Documenting the Living Dead
Chapter 1. Games of Enterprise and Security in Luis Urrea, Valeria Luiselli, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Chapter 2. Documenting the US-Mexico Border: Photography, Movement, and Paradox
Chapter 3. Latinx Realisms: The Cinematic Borderworlds of Josefina LOpez, David Riker, and Alex Rivera
Part II. Imagining the Living Dead
Chapter 4. Markets of Resurrection: Cat Ghosts, Aztec Zombies, and the Living Dead Economy
Chapter 5. Speculative Governances of the Dead: The Underclass, Underworld, and Undercommons
Coda: Dreaming of Deportation, or, When Everything "Goes South"
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Imagination in the Age of National Security and Market Neoliberalization
Part I. Documenting the Living Dead
Chapter 1. Games of Enterprise and Security in Luis Urrea, Valeria Luiselli, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Chapter 2. Documenting the US-Mexico Border: Photography, Movement, and Paradox
Chapter 3. Latinx Realisms: The Cinematic Borderworlds of Josefina LOpez, David Riker, and Alex Rivera
Part II. Imagining the Living Dead
Chapter 4. Markets of Resurrection: Cat Ghosts, Aztec Zombies, and the Living Dead Economy
Chapter 5. Speculative Governances of the Dead: The Underclass, Underworld, and Undercommons
Coda: Dreaming of Deportation, or, When Everything "Goes South"
Notes
Bibliography
Index