Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature

by Stephen C. Tobin

Overview

Vision, Technology and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature interrogates an array of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico whose themes engage directly with visual technologies and the subjectivities they help produce – all published during and influenced by the country’s neoliberal era. This book argues that television, computers, and smartphones and the literary narratives that treat them all correspond to separate-yet-overlapping scopic regimes within the country today. Amidst the shifts occurring in the country’s field of vision during this period, the authors of these cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk narratives imagine how these devices contribute to producing specular subjects—or subjects who are constituted in large measure by their use and interaction with visual technologies. In doing so, they repeatedly recur to the posthuman figure of the cyborg in order to articulate these changes; Stephen C. Tobin therefore contends that the literary cyborg becomes a discursive site for working through the problematics of sight in Mexico during the globalized era. In all, these “specular fictions” represent an exceptional tendency within literary expression—especially within the cyberpunk genre—that grapples with themes and issues regarding the nature of vision being increasingly mediated by technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031311550
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	07/07/2023
Series:	Studies in Global Science Fiction
Edition description:	2023
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Stephen C. Tobin is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He teaches literature and film classes on Latin American science fiction, posthumanism, speculative ecocriticism, and organized the 2022 symposium Surviving the Anthropocene: Speculative Fictions from Latin America’s Past, Present, and Futures. This is his first monograph.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Entering the Screen.- Chapter 2: “‘Where is my Eye?’ Gendered Cyborgs, the Male Gaze, and Lack in La primera calle de la soledad [The First Street of Solitude] and ‘Esferas de visión’ [‘Spheres of Vision’] by Gerardo Porcayo”.- Chapter 3: Televisual Subjectivities: Mediatic Ultraviolence and Disappearing Bodies in “Ruido gris” [“Gray Noise”] and Punto cero [Point Zero] by Pepe Rojo.- Chapter 4: Fake Presidents and Fake News: Holograms and Virtual Lenses in Eve Gil’s Virtus and Guillermo Lavín’s “Él piensa que algo no encaja” [“He Thinks Something is Off”].- Chapter 5: Conclusion: Specular Fictions in the Age of Embodied Internet

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“How do speculative narratives engage with major societal and technological changes? Stephen C. Tobin answers this question through excellent analyses of numerous Mexican speculative fictions. He postulates narrative itself as a mutable genre that constantly adapts as it interfaces with other media, particularly visual culture. In so doing, he shows how, beyond reflecting the debates of their time, speculative narratives also imagines new modes of knowing. Vision, Technology and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature will be a key text both for scholars of Latin American science fiction and the fantastic and for any scholar interested in the role that the written word continues to play in an increasingly audiovisual society.” (David Dalton, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of North Carolina)

“Dr. Stephen Tobin’s monograph is the first book examining cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk literature written in Spanish. The book shows how Mexican cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk literature not only ‘reflects’ the way technology is transforming subjectivity, but how it even anticipates new modes of subjectivity that are absent in other types of cultural works. Tobin reads these literary texts in dialogue with works on technological remediation, cyborg theory, and theories of media and visuality, but also carefully provides contextual information as needed. As such, the book will make an engaging read for scholars and non-specialists alike.” (Miguel García, Assistant Professor of Mexican Studies, Arizona State University)

Editorial Reviews

Tobin organizes his monograph both thematically and chronologically. … Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature is a sophisticated and valuable analysis suitable for graduate study and useful to scholars who are similarly focused upon these timely issues of technology, vision, subjectivity, and speculative literature.” (Michael Pitts, Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Vol. 11 (1-2), 2024)

From the Publisher