César Barros A. is an immigrant educator, researcher, videographer, musician and activist from Santiago de Chile based in Washington Heights, NYC. He is Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz. He is also the Vice President for Academics of the New Paltz Chapter of the United University Professions Union.

He is the author of Escenas y obscenas del consumo: arte, visibilidad y mercancía en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2013). His most recent articles appeared in the journals Visual Studies and Latin American and Latino Visual Culture. His video-essays with the video collective colectiva somoslacélula have been shown in different venues across the Americas.

Degrees

PhD in Hispanic Language and Literatures. 2010. Washington University in Saint Louis.

Master of Arts in Latin American Studies. 2008. Universidad de Chile.

Master of Arts in Hispanic Language and Literatures. 2005. Washington University in Saint Louis.

BA in Hispanic Linguistics and Literatures. 2001. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

 Academic Work 

César’s research focuses on bringing to the surface the relations between visual culture, performativity, political economy and historical memory in Latin America, especially in Chile. Among the subjects he has written about are: the production and reproduction of consumption and debt spaces and cultural messaging as a neoliberal common sense; debt and the production of time and memory; telenovelas and the production and reproduction of ideologies of race, gender, class, happiness and success in Latin America; how we value images and how they are immersed in a sort of political economy that functions through difference and repetition; performance, dance, and memory under military regimes in Latin America; immigration and the politics of “acceptance”; avant-gardism and psychoanalysis; the Chilean Unidad Popular and Dictatorship periods and the place of images and choreography within them; indigeneity, coloniality and non-occidental(ized) epistemologies.

 

Selected Publications

Book

Escenas y obscenas del consumo. Arte, mercancía y visibilidad en el Cono Sur. Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2013.

Articles

“Dissident Banknote Interventions: Toward a Genealogy of a Clandestine Political Practice in Latin America.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 3(2023). 

“Frame, value, and (in)visibility: Vik Muniz’s Deslocamentos and the political economy of images” Visual Studies5 (2022). 

“¿Dónde están?” Sueño de la razón 9 (2020).

“Ni los asesinatos, ni las mutilaciones” De Manifiesto: expresiones ciudadanas a un año del estallido social. Santiago: NMapa, 2020.

“Desaparición, danza, insistencia: variaciones de La cueca sola” Trans-In-Corporados 2017. (2018) 

“Desaparecer en la escritura: sujeto y fracaso en la Trilogía involuntaria de Mario Levrero.” Un asombro renovado: Vanguardias contemporáneas en América Latina. Eds. Luis Castañeda and Matthew Bush. Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2017. 61-80. 

Co-authored with Ángeles Donoso-Macaya. “Dis-locar la materia, re-orientar el presente. Sobre Neltume señala el camino (2016) de Araya-Carrión”. Vazantes 1(2017).

“Declassifying the Archive: The Bombardment of La Moneda Palace and the Political Economy of the Image” Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America. Eds. Matthew Bush and Tania Gentic. New York: Routledge, 2016. 127-145. 

“Lugar común, excepcionalidad y superficie en el cine de Martín Rejtman”. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos XLVIII, 2, 2014: 373-394. 

Co-authored with Ángeles Donoso Macaya. “Imágenes (des)atadas de la cultura afroamericana: a propósito de The Black Power Mixtape y los documentales de Marlon Riggs”. La Fuga Revista de Cine. 

“Del ‘macrocosmos de la hamburguesa’ a ‘lo real de la realidad’: consumo, sujeto y acción en La prueba de César Aira”. Revista Hispánica Moderna2 (2012): 135-152. 

“La broma de Raúl: objeto, mercancía y estética en Tajos de Rafael Courtoisie”. Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 71 (2010): 315-336. 

 Texts for Art Catalogues

“Coreografías minerales. Sobre Estratos de Alejandra Prieto” in Prieto, Alejandra. Estratos. Santiago: Galería Gabriela Mistral, 2019. Print.

 “Ese oscuro objeto” in Alejandra Prieto Relación de aspecto. Santiago: CCU, 2012. Print.

 Book Reviews

Antonio Calibán Catrileo. Awkan epupillan mew. Dos espíritus en divergencia. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 24 (2020): 254-259

Candice Amich. Precarious Forms: Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Latin American Theater Review 1(2020): 151-152. Print.

Alejandra Castillo. Disensos Feministas. Conversaciones del Cono Sur 2 (2017). Web.

Alberto Moreiras. Línea de sombra. El no sujeto de lo político. Nómadas 26 (2007): 251-253. Print.

Texts for Art Shows

“Reflections in the Dark. About Alejandra Prieto’s Invisible Dust” New York, Y Gallery, April 2012.

“Hidden in the Open”. Text accompanying Alejandra Prieto: Laboring (in) the Lavish. Davidson College, November, 2011.

 “Artefactos en suspenso (sobre Lágrimas Negras de Alejandra Prieto)”. Santiago, Chile, Die Ecke Gallery, May, 2011.

 

Video Work with colectiva somoslacélula

2019 Para que nunca más en Chile

2019 Voltear la cabeza de Chile

2020 Desaprender la ciudadanía

2021 Vientos de agitación

2021 (With Lina Meruane) Matar el ojo