The relationship between power and medicine is complex and many people have studied it from various points of view. In my case, I am interested in how literary and cinematic works from Spanish America and Spain bring to light some of the ways medical discourse has been co-opted for political purposes, offering us at the same time ways to resist such actions.
La relación entre el poder y la medicina es compleja y muchas personas la han estudiado desde varios puntos de vista. En mi caso, estoy interesado en cómo las obras literarias y cinematográficas de Hispanoamérica y España muestran algunas de las formas en que el discurso médico ha sido cooptado con fines políticos, ofreciéndonos al mismo tiempo vías para resistir tales acciones.
Publications | Publicaciones
Medicine, Power, and the Authoritarian Regime in Hispanic Literature offers a substantial examination of how contemporary authors deal with the complex legacies of authoritarian regimes in various Spanish-speaking countries. It does so by focusing on works that explore an under-studied aspect: the reliance of authoritarian power on medical notions for political purposes.
From the Porfirian regime in Mexico to Castro’s Cuba, this book describes how such regimes have sought to seize medical knowledge to support propagandistic ideas and marginalize their opponents in ways that transcend specific pathologies, political ideologies, and geographical and temporal boundaries.
This book brings together the work of literary scholars, cultural critics, and historians of medicine, arguing that contemporary authors have actively challenged authoritarian narratives of medicine and disease. In doing so, they continue to re-examine the place of these regimes in the collective memory of Latin America and Spain.
Pérez, Oscar A. “Ficciones de contagio voluntario: VIH/sida en el periodo especial.” Letras Hispanas, vol. 14, 2018, pp. 7-21. [link]
Pérez, Oscar A. “Ensayos clínicos y neoliberalismo en Wakolda de Lucía Puenzo.” Imagofagia. Revista de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios de Cine y Audiovisual, no. 15, 2017, pp. 1-22. [link]
Pérez, Oscar A. “La Montaña Mágica: Representations of HIV/AIDS from the Sanatorium.” Alternative Communities in Hispanic Literature and Culture, edited by Luis H. Castañeda and Javier González, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016, pp. 37-60. [link]
Pérez, Oscar A. “Una aproximación biopolítica a la narrativa de la posguerra: La tuberculosis en Pabellón de reposo de Camilo José Cela y El mar de Blai Bonet.” Hispania, vol. 98, no. 2, 2015, pp. 231–42. [link]
Public Presentations | Presentaciones para el público general
“Pandemic Visions in Newspapers and Literature from Mexico.” Doc Chat, Episode 26, April 29, the New York Public Library. English: link; español: enlace.
Oscar A. Pérez 