Beyond the Pink Tide - (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present) by Macarena Gomez-Barris (Paperback)

About the Book

"Beyond the Pink Tide considers a wave of artistic and curatorial efforts and social movements that refuse national borders in an effort to think hemispherically. In modeling a transnational American Studies, the book considers recent art and cultural production that engage politics in the Americas. In the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Latin America experienced a shift toward left-leaning and progressive politics that challenged US neoliberalism and hegemony. The media dubbed this turn the "pink tide," and by 2009, leftist governments were in power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Venezuela. But by 2010, this tide began to turn as several governments failed to implement their progressive agendas, leaving the structures of capitalism intact. Beyond the Pink Tide explores new ways of understanding social and political transformation, particularly through the everyday practices of queer communities, anticapitalist movements, decolonization, feminisms, and the arts. Macarena Gâomez-Barris shows readers the possibilities beyond the limited frame of state-centered politics to achieve concrete social transformation beginning at the level of artistic and social imagination--in Latin America, the United States, and the world."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

How can we create a model of politics that reaches beyond the nation-state, and beyond settler-colonialism, authoritarianism, and neoliberalism? In Beyond the Pink Tide, Macarena Gómez-Barris explores the alternatives of recent sonic, artistic, activist, visual, and embodied cultural production. By focusing on radical spaces of potential, including queer, youth, trans-feminist, Indigenous, and anticapitalist movements and artistic praxis, Gómez-Barris offers a timely call for a decolonial, transnational American Studies. She reveals the broad possibilities that emerge by refusing national borders in the Americas and by seeing and thinking beyond the frame of state-centered politics. Concrete social justice and transformation begin at the level of artistic, affective, and submerged political imaginaries--in Latin America and the United States, across South-South solidarities, and beyond.

From the Back Cover

"In amplifying the submerged undercurrents and inhabiting the radical spaces of queer, youth, and Indigenous resistances in Latin America and the Caribbean, Macarena Gómez-Barris enunciates a timely call for transnational Americas studies beyond the violence of bordered nation-states. Dynamically rich and interdisciplinary, Beyond the Pink Tide examines the artistic, sonic, and spatial practices that shape South-South affinities and social activisms. It shows us that alternatives to the exhausted and exhausting limitations of liberal democracy are possible. In fact, they are already here."--Jodi A. Byrd, author of The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism

"Beyond the lenses of dictatorships, revolutions, nation-states, beyond area studies and contained geographies, Macarena Gómez-Barris argues for submerged politics, flows of knowledge, and archipelagic understandings of the present. Deconstructing the Pink Tide's imbrication in extractivism, debt, and social normativity, she turns to contemporary forms of artistic activism that imagine other worlds."--Licia Fiol-Matta, author of The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music

"With laser-sharp writing, Macarena Gómez-Barris provides a luminous and penetrating analysis of recent artistic and activist efforts across the Americas, with an emphasis on political music, film, performance, and visual art. Beyond the Pink Tide is a timely and compelling book that should be read by anyone seeking critical hope around questions of queer justice, feminist justice, anticapitalist justice, and Indigenous justice."--Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author

Macarena Gómez-Barris is Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute, Director of the Global South Center, and author of Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile and The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives.