Resignifying Lacan: the use of psychoanalysis in Žižek’s literary and film criticism

El presente artículo se propone analizar los usos del psicoanálisis en la crítica literaria y cinematográfica de Žižek a partir de su resignificación sobre lo real, lo imaginario y lo simbólico de la teoría lacaniana. Se centra en las ideas como el gran Otro, la fantasía, el objeto a y la pulsión de muerte como herramienta hermenéutica para reinterpretar la literatura clásica y el cine moderno. Al final del texto se trata de aplicar la idea žižekiana en el análisis de algunos textos con fuertes matices psicoanalíticos y cuestionamientos sociales en la narrativa hispanoamericana contemporánea.This article aims to analyze the psychoanalytic elements in Žižek’s literary and cinematographic criticism, according to his redefinition of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic in Lacan’s theory. Ideas such as the big Other, fantasy, object a and the death drive are used by himas hermeneutic tools to reinterpret classical literatura and modern cinema. At the end of the article we will apply the ideas above to the análisis of some contemporary Spanish-American narrative, characterized by their strong psychoanalytic and psychosocial contents

The mophology of disease: body and illness in the latin American literature over the last decades

En este artículo se pretende hacer un breve recorrido de las transformaciones que ha experimentado la dimensión metafórica de la enfermedad en la literatura hispanoamericana de las últimas décadas. Se trata de ahondar en las diferentes implicaciones alegóricas que tiene la enfermedad durante las distintas etapas de la literatura hispanoamericana. Bajo el ambiente autoritario de la dictadura, los cuerpos enfermos de los subalternos remiten constantemente a las condiciones estigmatizadas de las minorías sociales. A lo largo de la transición democrática, los cuerpos enfermos obtienen una connotación más subversiva y una expansión desterritorializadora que traspasa el control biopolítico. En algunas novelas de los últimos años del siglo XXI, la enfermedad logra una trascendencia que va más allá de las disputas ideológicas y sirve como denominador común del ser, poniendo de manifiesto la tendencia a volver a las cualidades básicas de la humanidad en la literaturaThis article aims to make a brief overview of the transformations that the metaphor disease has undergone in the recent Latin American literature. We will explain the different allegorical implications that the disease embodies in Latin American literature during different historical stages. In the first years of the dictatorship, the disease constantly refers to the stigmatized conditions of social minorities. Throughout the democratic transition, the diseased body gains a more subversive connotation and a deterritorializing expansion that goes beyond the biopolitical control. In some novels during the last years of the 21st century, the disease achieves a kind of a transcendence that goes beyond ideological disputes and serves as a common denominator of being, highlighting the trend in the literary field towards the return of humanit

Semantic Congruency Modulates the Effect of Attentional Load on the Audiovisual Integration of Animate Images and Sounds

Attentional processes play a complex and multifaceted role in the integration of input from different sensory modalities. However, whether increased attentional load disrupts the audiovisual (AV) integration of common objects that involve semantic content remains unclear. Furthermore, knowledge regarding how semantic congruency interacts with attentional load to influence the AV integration of common objects is limited. We investigated these questions by examining AV integration under various attentional-load conditions. AV integration was assessed by adopting an animal identification task using unisensory (animal images and sounds) and AV stimuli (semantically congruent AV objects and semantically incongruent AV objects), while attentional load was manipulated by using a rapid serial visual presentation task. Our results indicate that attentional load did not attenuate the integration of semantically congruent AV objects. However, semantically incongruent animal sounds and images were not integrated (as there was no multisensory facilitation), and the interference effect produced by the semantically incongruent AV objects was reduced by increased attentional-load manipulations. These findings highlight the critical role of semantic congruency in modulating the effect of attentional load on the AV integration of common objects