"A Phenomenology of Affect: The Case of Marcela Turati"
Friday, November 19, 2021 , 2:20 - 3:40 p.m.
Location: Carmen Zoom/Hagerty 255
Contact: Center for Latin American Studies
On Friday, November 19th, Dr. Gabriela Polit-Dueñas will give a lecture entitled "A Phenomenology of Affect: The Case of Marcela Turati."
This event, co-sponsored by CLAS and the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese is free and open to the public and will be presented via Zoom. Register here to receive the link.
SPPO graduate students will meet in Hagerty Hall 255 to participate as part of colloquium.
Abstract:
The talk is a reflection on a chapter of Unwanted Witnesses. Journalism and Conflict in Contemporary Latin America. The book discusses the work of five contemporary cronistas whose crónicas focus on the suffering of others.
Marcela Turati is one of the most prominent Mexican journalists who wrote about the Mexican war on narcos since its early stages. She holds a special place in the local field of production of journalism and human rights.
Through a ‘radical contextualization’ of her work (Bourdieu), the analysis includes a thick description of the material conditions in which Turati performs her work, the textual analysis of her crónicas, and the examination of how affects appear (or not) in her texts.
The objective of this research is to bring awareness to the risks run by journalists who write about victims and the emotional tolls they pay in their profession. The analysis brings light to the ethical demands implicit in the representation of the pain of others.
About the speaker:
Dr. Gabriela Polit-Dueñas is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. Her new book Unwanted Witnesses: Journalists and Conflict in Contemporary Latin America, focuses on the works of five journalists from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina who write about the most pressing problems affecting the region. While in her previous work Polit-Dueñas explored the representation of violence in contexts of armed conflict, political turmoil, and illegal business, her more recent work focuses primarily on the affective experience of writing. She is interested in how journalists listen to the subjects of their stories and embrace their testimonies and in the human bonding between subjects, authors, and audiences.
