Description

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2023 LASA Visual Culture Studies Section Book Prize, Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

The first comprehensive study of cartonera, a vibrant publishing phenomenon born in Latin America.

A publishing phenomenon and artistic project, cartonera was born in the wake of Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. Infused with a rebellious spirit, it has exploded in popularity, with hundreds of publishers across Latin America and Europe making colorful, low-cost books out of cardboard salvaged from the street. Taking Form, Making Worlds is the first comprehensive study of cartonera. Drawing on interdisciplinary research conducted across Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the authors show how this hands-on practice has fostered a politically engaged network of writers, artists, and readers. More than a social movement, cartonera uses texts, workshops, encounters, and exhibitions to foster community and engagement through open-ended forms that are at once artistic and social. For various groups including waste-pickers, Indigenous communities, rural children, and imprisoned women, cartonera provides a platform for unique stories and sparks collaborations that bring the walls of the “lettered city” tumbling down. In contexts of stigma and exclusion, cartonera collectives give form to a decolonial aesthetics of resistance, making possible a space of creative experimentation through which plural worlds can be brought to life.

About the Author

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Lucy Bell is a senior lecturer in Spanish and translation studies at the University of Surrey.

Alexander Ungprateeb Flynn is an assistant professor of anthropology and contemporary art at UCLA.

Patrick O’Hare is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of St. Andrews.

Praise For…

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[Bell, Flynn and O'Hare] emphasize [cartonera publishing's] relation with decentralized grassroots organizing around the various manifestations of structural violence in Latin America based on the manifold experiences of marginalized communities such as LGBTQ, feminist, indigenous, or Zapatista movements. . . Situating cartonera publishing in this context . . . the authors resist a clear definition of the movement. Instead, they emphasise its shape-shifting character as a manifold and defiant positioning against the conditions of intersectional marginalization. . . Taking Form, Making Worlds makes an important methodological contribution by proposing and enacting more horizontal, collaborative and diverse ways of doing and representing scholarly research – while offering insights to other scholars who aim to engage in similar processes.
— Cultural Studies