Intersected Identities: Strategies of Visualisation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Mexican Culture

Segre (Hispanic studies, U. of Cambridge, UK) examines the ways in which the interdisciplinary, the eclectic and the combinatory have served a strategic purpose in the development of a self-aware and identity-conscious visual discourse in Mexico, from the formative 19th century to the post-national 1990s. The analysis considers a broad array of creative forms--observational writing, illustrated periodicals, graphic art, painting, photography and film--in a series of linked studies examining the construction and interrogation of visual identities in reproductive media. In particular , it looks at ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive. Illustrated throughout in b&w. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)