{"product_id":"spectral-aesthetics-visualizing-the-crisis-of-migrant-disappearance-hardback-9781477333839","title":"Spectral Aesthetics; Visualizing the Crisis of Migrant Disappearance (Hardback) 9781477333839","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eSpectral Aesthetics\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eVisualizing the Crisis of Migrant Disappearance\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eChina Medel (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781477333839, University of Texas Press\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 7 May 2026\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e262 pages, 20 b\u0026amp;w illus.\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.454 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eSpectral Aesthetics\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating work on the role of visual cultures in the production of life-making work for migrants crossing the US-Mexico border. China Medel provides a new way of imagining border aesthetics that counters the dominant narrative about migrants in mainstream media while drawing on critical theory from a range of disciplines and areas of study.\" - Camilla Fojas, Arizona State University, author of \u003ci\u003eBorder Optics: Surveillance Cultures on the US-Mexico Frontier\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"At a moment when the precarity of immigrant lives is foregrounded in US political discourse, \u003ci\u003eSpectral Aesthetics\u003c\/i\u003e provides a timely, multidisciplinary assessment of the question of visibility. China Medel gives us a way out of the visibility\/invisibility binary by offering up the \"alternative optics\" of the spectral. This book is a must-read for those studying visual culture and the US-Mexico borderlands. \" - Ila Nicole Sheren, Washington University in St. Louis, author of \u003ci\u003eBorder Ecology: Art and Environmental Crisis at the Margins\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnalyzing how artists reimagine migrant disappearance and visibility at the US–Mexico border.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e In the mid-1990s, the US government implemented Prevention through Deterrence, a major buildup of troops, walls, and surveillance around El Paso and San Diego. Cut off from these crucial urban crossings, migrants flowed into the dangerous surrounding deserts, where some ten thousand have since died. This is all according to plan: Pentagon documents describe the strategy of funneling migrants toward “mortal danger.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e In this bracing critique, China Medel explores the aesthetics enabling and resisting the crisis of migrant death. The nation-state’s performance of sovereignty along the border, predicated on mass casualties, is tolerated and even celebrated, thanks to the images in our heads of racialized and therefore criminal bodies, made invisible as they disintegrate in the baking sand. \u003ci\u003eSpectral Aesthetics\u003c\/i\u003e shows how state officials and mainstream media, relying on postracial ideologies and white-supremacist agendas, collectively foster this picture of a brown body so abject that it is disposable. In close readings of artworks contesting this murderous visual regime, Medel discovers an alternative kind of sight, one emphasizing the ghostly traces of the dead. These are images not of the individual “alien” but of life itself, indisposable. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e List of Illustrations \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Introduction. The Hauntings of Disavowed Life in the Militarized Borderlands \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Chapter 1. Documenting the Undocumented: Captive Visuality and Textures of Mourning in Marco Williams’\u003cbr\u003es \u003ci\u003eThe Undocumented\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Chapter 2. Palpable Absence and Critical Invisibility: Photographing Traces of Migrant Life and Death \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Chapter 3. Infrastructures of Borderization and Migration’\u003cbr\u003es Fugitive Poetics of Freedom in \u003ci\u003eChildren of Men\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Chapter 4. \u003ci\u003eThe Transborder Immigrant Tool\u003c\/i\u003e and the Transitive Poetics of Migration \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Conclusion. Toward a Translucent Visibility \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Acknowledgments \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Notes \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Bibliography \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Index \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Texas Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52591022145816,"sku":"9781477333839","price":63.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/spectral-aesthetics-visualizing-the-crisis-of-migrant-disappearance-hardback-9781477333839","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}