The Global Phallus: On the Digital and Allegorical Economy of the Hispanic Subaltern in Hollywood Film

Abstract

In his Border Matters, Jose D. Saldivar asserts, US-Mexico border writing entails a new intercultural theory of making sensitive [sic] to both local processes and global forces, such as Euro-imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, and economic and political hegemonies (35). If this is so, then Hollywood film is an ideal medium to elaborate an intercultural theory, especially if we accept that Hollywood nowadays is global, and thus not merely North American or national (Neale and Smith). In this article, I propose to consider Hollywood itself as a representational border that must be theorized in a way that encompasses both the USA/ Mexican border and the extended USA/Latin American-Spanish border. In order to recycle old names and solve old antagonisms, here the term will be used, not against that of Latino, but as a more general one encompassing the two global borders that define the Latino and Latin-American/ Spanish condition. Thus a Hispanic, intercultural border theory would help us understand several interconnected problems such as North American global hegemony, the ensuing Hispanic global subalternity as well as the hibridating border relationship between both cultural areas. By incorporating psychoanalysis to border theory, I will attempt a geopolitical theorization of