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Paul Merchant

Paul Merchant is a PhD candidate at the Centre of Latin American Studies. His research examines figures of house and home in contemporary film from Argentina and Chile. The home, and with it conservative notions of familial and territorial belonging, has often been associated with repressive practices, particularly during periods of dictatorship. Paul’s work looks at how recent documentary and fiction productions from these countries destabilize the term, examining afresh the porous boundaries between the private and the public, the material and the imaginary, and between nature and culture. The films thus prompt questions on subjectivity and community, the role of media and technology, and on gender and sexuality, conducted in dialogue with thinkers from Jacques Derrida to Nelly Richard and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Paul has translated work by Mercedes Araujo, Mariano Blatt and Gerardo Sifuentes for Palabras Errantes, and texts by Raúl Ruiz, Julio Le Parc and Oscar Murillo for the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Publications:

‘Beyond Biopolitics: Reading Bolaño’s Human Fragments’, Modern Languages Open [forthcoming]

> Email: pm437@cam.ac.uk