This talk draws from an ethnography of a little-known therapeutic community of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States. The foundation of this community is a grueling three-day healing ritual called an experience. This talk describes one such experience that took place in the Northern California forest in 2022, focusing on its novel practice of cathartic writing. I argue that this writing practice is far more than a tool for self-care or self-expression; it is also a medium for collectivity...
In recent decades, an explosion of critical interventions from multiple fields has emphasized the return to the archive as one of the key axes from which central problems of the culture and history of the Americas are thought about, read, and discussed. However, studies on critics and artistic practices have, to different extents, always been anchored in and in conversation with the archive.
This set of presentations sought to reflect on the way in which Latin American studies have positioned themselves...
