BOOK MANUSCRIPT

NECROTERRITORIOS: MATADEROS Y POLÍTICAS DE LA MUERTE EN LA CUENCA GANADERA DEL PLATA

In preparation

This monograph proposes a biopolitical analysis of literary and visual materials from the cattle raising region integrated by Southern Brasil, Uruguay, and Argentina through an expanded notion of the slaughterhouse. I use the term “necroterritory” to broaden the scope of the slaughterhouse as a modern architectural typology, and reframe it as an ever evolving biopolitical arena where to historicize the politics of life and death operating within the cultural production of the region; particularly in times of political upheaval starting from the postcolonial era to the present. I depart from the Argentine foundational novella El matadero (Esteban Echeverría, 1839) to recast the politics of surveillance that operate in classical notions of the slaughterhouse, and conceptions of Latin American modernity as a peripheral process, where nations are mainly regarded as contributors of raw materials to the globalized world. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s and Héctor Hoyos’ ideas of animal and material agency, I show the productivity of cattle and meat in shaping the cultural field. I analyze representations of the slaughterhouse in a range of genres, including the chronicle “Criollaje en Mataderos” (Arlt, 1929) and the short story “El Matadero” (Martín Kohan, 2003). I also look at visual materials that use meat as a vehicle to comment on history, such as Carlos Alonso’s painting dating from the 1976-84 dictatorship. Finally, I critique architectural considerations of the slaughterhouse as a space relegated outside of urban areas by tracing the history of the neighborhood of Mataderos in Buenos Aires and analyzing the monumental Art Deco facilities built by Francisco Salamone (1937-38).






EDITED VOLUME

RUGE EL BOSQUE: ECOPOESÍA DEL CONO SUR

Volume I – Caleta Olivia, 2023Co-edited with Javiera Perez Salerno and Whitney DeVos

This volume brings together poets from diverse communities and literary traditions based on a mutual concern for the environment; with the support of a Ford-LASA Special Project Grant and a Research Seed Grant from UTSA. It reunites contemporary poetry in lenguas originarias, Portuñol and Spanish from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and its borderlands. This project is accompanied by a podcast and a digital map; the map currently under review for a Digital Projects for the Public Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.






EDITED VOLUME

ECOPOESÍA DE MESOAMÉRICA

Volume II – In Preparation
Co-edited with Javiera Perez Salerno and Whitney DeVos

This volume compiles ecopoetry in lenguas originarias, Creole, English, and Spanish from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. Subsequent volumes of Ruge el Bosque will focus on the Guianas and the Caribbean Basin (Vol. 3), the Andean States (Vol. 4), and the Amazon Rainforest (Vol. 5).






EDITED VOLUME

UNPREDICTABLE ARCHITECTURES: THE POLITICS OF GARDENING IN LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE

In preparation
Co-edited with Lucas Mertehikian