Spanish: Narco Culture

Studies the culture that has arisen as a result of the drug trade in Latin America. Seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What is the relationship between the drug trade and the global world system and; 2) What role does art play in the episteme created by the drug trade. Prerequisites: SPAN 3615, SPAN 3620, SPAN 3665, or SPAN 3670, or Instructor permission.

Prereqs enforced by the system: SPAN 3615, SPAN 3620, or SPAN 3665, or SPAN 3670 PACE students by permission and override.

This course fulfills the 4000 level requirement for literature and/or culture. This course studies how the drug trade forms part of a longer tradition of banditry through the image of the "bandido" and how it is emblematic of the ideology of excess constitutive of global capitalism. The course analyzes narco culture in the historical, cultural, and ideological registers. While we will analyze cultural phenomena such as music (narco corridos, narco reggaetón), films, series, and novels among other things, we will also be concerned with how drug trade shapes and is shaped by the ideological situation in which it occurs at both a local and more global level. Some of the questions that concern this course are: How is the drug trade the product of national politics? How does the global fascination with narco narratives as seen by the Netflix series, Narcos or Breaking Bad, play into a sensibility of excitement resulting in what the Mexican critic Sayek Valencia has called, gore capitalism? What role does our consumption of these cultural products play in fueling the global drug trade?

Come to work having done the reading, viewing, or listening ready to engage in lively discussions about the material.

periodic reading or attendance quizzes, two exams, one paper turned in at the end of the semester