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ix Acknowledgments The experience of writing a second book is markedly different from that of writing a first book. If the first book has its roots in the dissertation, and therefore always feels as if it were being written “for” something or someone else, the second book emerges out of a strange freedom: one is writing, simply, because one must write. At the same time, this project is the fruit of provocative and inspiring conversations and exchanges with a great number of people and, in this sense, is very much written “for” these others: if not out of an institutional or professional obligation, then out of a genuine intellectual debt. These people—teachers and students , colleagues and interlocutors—populate each page of this book, beginning with my former professors who are now dear friends, Sylvia Molloy and Gabriela Basterra. I had the good fortune to begin my academic career at one of the most stimulating places to research Latin American literary and cultural studies. At the University of Pittsburgh, I taught—and learned from—a wonderful group of graduate students in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures. I want to thank the participants of the “Interrogative Signs” seminar in spring 2008 for debating some of the early ideas for this book. The Center for Latin American Studies and the University Research Council Small Grants Program at Pitt supported preliminary research on this book. After four years of being part of a commuting family, I won the lottery and was offered a wonderful job close to relatives and dear friends in California. Joining the faculty at the University of Southern California has thus felt like a homecoming in many ways. I can say with confidence that I have the best colleagues around: in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Sherry Velasco and Roberto Ignacio Díaz have been incredible mentors and friends, and my newest colleagues—Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla, Sam Steinberg, and Natalia Pérez—make the future at once incalculable and promising. I am also fortunate to be part of the Department of Comparative Literature and the Doctoral Program in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture with Peggy Kamuf, Panivong Norindr, and many others who are protagonists in USC’s vibrant intellectual culture. I want to extend a special thanks to the graduate students who participated in the “Aesthetics of Torture” seminar in spring 2011. My work would be impoverished without the brilliance of the following interlocutors and friends: Nathalie Bouzaglo, Patrick Dove, Jonathan Freedman, Michal Friedman, Kate Jenckes, David E. Johnson , Jeffrey Lesser, Brett Levinson, Jacques Lezra, Emily Maguire, Alberto Moreiras, Ronnie Perelis, Justin Read, and Mariano Siskind, all of whom have had an impact upon this book. Many thanks to Vivaldo Andrade dos Santos and Ana Lee for proofreading the Portuguese translations , Ryan Trombley for his meticulous editing, the anonymous readers at Northwestern University Press for their invaluable feedback on the manuscript, and Henry L. Carrigan for his enthusiastic support of this project. I am grateful to live just down the coast from Karina Miller and Jessica Pressman, with whom I read, write, revise, laugh, complain, and practice yoga on a weekly basis, and without whom I would be in complete intellectual exile here in beautiful, sunny Solana Beach. A lot has happened since I began to write Figurative Inquisitions. Miles and Elias—to whom this book is dedicated—were born and learned to crawl, walk, talk, run, and dribble a soccer ball as I drafted chapters. Simon began to read with a hunger that I remember experiencing as a child, and would often read next to me as I wrote. My parents, as well as Salina Bastos and Haley Calabrese, have loved and helped to care for my three wonderful boys so that I could work. Finally, for nearly twenty years, Josh has been my partner in crime and my rock. I owe him everything. x ❘ Acknowledgments ...

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