{"id":2092,"date":"2025-06-01T21:07:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T21:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2025-06-03T21:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T21:54:11","slug":"winning-articles-for-the-journal-of-latin-american-cultural-studies-article-prize-for-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/2025\/06\/01\/winning-articles-for-the-journal-of-latin-american-cultural-studies-article-prize-for-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning articles for the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies Article Prize for 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Journal\u00a0congratulates\u00a0Irina Troconis whose article\u00a0\u201cFrench Kissing the Icon: Erotic Iconoclash and Political Subversion in Deborah Castillo\u2019s\u00a0The Emancipatory Kiss<\/em>\u201d\u00a0was awarded\u00a0the inaugural\u00a0Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies\u00a0<\/em>Article Prize,\u00a0recognizing the most outstanding article by an emerging scholar that is accepted for publication in the\u00a0Journal\u00a0<\/em>in 2023. The Journal also wishes to congratulate Fan Fan, whose article was recognized with the honourable mention.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

\u201cFrench Kissing the Icon: Erotic Iconoclash and Political Subversion in Deborah Castillo\u2019s The Emancipatory Kiss\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n
By Irina\u00a0Troconis\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Abstract<\/span><\/h2>\n

This article explores the obscene\u2019s potential to become politically subversive through the analysis of the performance video\u00a0The Emancipatory Kiss<\/em> by Venezuelan artist Deborah Castillo. Drawing from a theoretical corpus that brings together pornography studies and media studies, memory, and materiality, and that engages with iconoclasm as defined by Bruno Latour and Michael Taussig, I discuss the operations that enable Castillo\u2019s piece to perform an act of what I call \u201cerotic iconoclash\u201d, which, I propose, makes visible and palpable the fragility of the power attributed to hypermasculine military figures of authority. I argue that Castillo\u2019s act of erotic iconoclash generates a residue\u2014an intolerable secretion\u2014in the image that resists being absorbed into symbol or narrative, that arouses and moves the audience, and that is not concerned with making sense of the world, but rather with un-making the world as we know it. In doing so, it opens up a way for us to rethink the relationship we establish with the dead and their many and varied afterlives outside the suffocating circularity created by acts of destruction and reconstruction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Theorising Belle \u00c9poque Rio de Janeiro through Opium: Jo\u00e3o do Rio\u2019s \u201cVis\u00f5es d\u2019\u00f3pio\u201d as a Postcolonial Framework<\/span><\/a><\/h4>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
By Fan Fan\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

In 1905, Brazilian writer Jo\u00e3o do Rio published the cr\u00f4nica \u201cVis\u00f5es d\u2019\u00f3pio\u201d (Visions of opium), an account of his forays into the Chinese opium dens of Rio de Janeiro. While opium is often emblematic of both Parisian cosmopolitanism and exotic Orientalism in fin-de-si\u00e8cle literature, I argue that the drug is less a replication of these coordinates in Brazil than a method of geopolitical thinking. Drawing from opium\u2019s extractive history in China and its versatility as a material thing \u2013 plant, commodity, drug, alkaloid \u2013 I argue that opium as theory and praxis not only reconfigures the writer\u2019s experience of Rio, but also makes stark the strategies behind and costs of Brazil\u2019s colonial formation. While opium sustains a desire for modernity through its exotic and cosmopolitan imaginaries, its destabilising effects on the body disrupt fantasies of colonial amalgamation, exposing histories of extraction and racialised labour implicit in the drug\u2019s circulation. Through an analysis that bridges empirical and new materialisms \u2013 and from a Chinese geographical axis that puts Brazil into a transnational dialogue beyond Europe \u2013 opium becomes a medium for thinking through Brazil\u2019s colonial\u00a0roots\u00a0and its place in the world among other nation-states during a period of transition from empire to republic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Journal\u00a0congratulates\u00a0Irina Troconis whose article\u00a0\u201cFrench Kissing the Icon: Erotic Iconoclash and Political Subversion in Deborah Castillo\u2019s\u00a0The Emancipatory Kiss\u201d\u00a0was awarded\u00a0the inaugural\u00a0Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies\u00a0Article Prize,\u00a0recognizing the most outstanding article by an emerging scholar that is accepted for publication in the\u00a0Journal\u00a0in 2023. The Journal also wishes to congratulate Fan Fan, whose article was recognized with the honourable mention.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cFrench Kissing the Icon: Erotic Iconoclash and Political Subversion in Deborah Castillo\u2019s The Emancipatory Kiss\u201d By Irina\u00a0Troconis\u00a0 \u00a0 Abstract This article explores the obscene\u2019s potential to become politically subversive through the analysis of the performance video\u00a0The Emancipatory Kiss by Venezuelan artist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2097,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions\/2097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlacs-travesia.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}