Explore every episode of the podcast Hopscotch!

Literature constructs for us scenarios and spaces in which, at least for a time, other habits and customs are in play, and which thus allow us to see that the rules of the everyday games that we play are as arbitrary as any others.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 02:17 Patterns of Commonality and Difference 04:00 Questions 16:06 Seeing and Playing Difference 30:56 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about teaching and reading Latin American literature. With Erin Graff Zivin and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:13 The Canon and Beyond
• 08:28 Latin America and Beyond
• 10:37 Images of Latin America
• 14:20 The Latin American Writer and the Tradition
• 19:40 Going Beyond Ourselves
• 22:27 Reading as Misreading
• 25:55 Inexhaustible Texts
• 29:54 Good Enough Readings
• 38:07 Repetition and Learning
• 37:40 Credits

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Samanta Schweblin's novel of uncanny horror on the Pampas, Fever Dream. With Jordana Blejmar and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:03 Genres in Dialogue 08:59 Imagining Space 15:30 Rethinking Agency 21:56 Shameful Monstrosity 26:55 Reading for a Moral 29:09 Disturbing Presence 33:59 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

As with a game we have started that gets out of hand, it can feel that all we can do is look on as events unfold when confronted with the seemingly irresistible force of a hyperobject in motion once a tipping point has been passed.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 06:27 The Chemistry of Anxiety 14:10 Questions 17:56 The Shadow of the Hyperobject 26:03 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Cristina Rivera Garza's The Taiga Syndrome. With Cristina Rivera Garza and Jon Beasley-Murray. In which we talk about tone, translation, and escape, among other things.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:38 Distance and Indirect Language 06:01 Tone and Experience 10:55 Mediation and the Archive 16:05 Quotation and Subversion 18:59 Speech and Concealment 22:57 Translation and Communality 26:37 Escape and Vanishing Points 28:30 Credits

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This is the wild west (wild north?) Russian style—or Swedish or Latvian, even Mexican or Argentine, it matters little, as it is the same almost everywhere now that untrammeled extraction reduces and eliminates any refuge a forest may offer, for wolves or for children, or for lovers on the lam.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 03:37 Beginnings, Endings, and Limits 15:39 Questions 18:26 Forests, Failures, and Low-Level Fear 29:17 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Rita Indiana's novel, Papi. With Arturo Victoriano and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see ⁠⁠https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

00:00 Introduction 01:10 A History of Migration 04:00 One Foot Here and Another One There 11:19 The Smell of Success 17:47 The Sounds of Progress 22:13 From Trujillo to Balaguer and Beyond 28:56 Dreams and Reality 33:16 Credits

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In a world in which movies, adverts, music videos, video games, and television all blend and cross-contaminate, new cross-cultural and transnational jargons and slang arise, and new roles to play, to compensate for the increasing inequalities and unbridled violence that are also associated with unregulated markets, be they legal or illegal.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 04:34 Constructing Excess 15:16 Questions 17:47 Loving the Game 32:06 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Chilean Pedro Lemebel's novel, My Tender Matador. With Juan Poblete and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

00:00 Introduction 01:22 Three Approaches to My Tender Matador 02:55 Lemebel's Context 07:35 A Theory of the Novel 14:02 A Politics of the Pose 19:40 An Affective Reconstruction of the 1980s 25:38 The Popular Baroque 30:58 Credits

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We are encouraged to take surfaces or appearances seriously in their own right.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 02:56 Names, Playacting, and Embellishment 09:44 Questions 14:55 Power, Performance, and Impurity 24:11 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing! With Giannina Braschi and Jon Beasley-Murray. In which we talk about language, cosmopolitanism, the collective, and the end of the twentieth century.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:32 Looking from a Distance 02:57 An Aperture in the World 06:49 From Spanish to English 10:01 Invading the North 12:36 Always Cosmopolitan 16:55 A Chorus of Voices 19:25 Yo-Yo 20:58 Waiting for Liberation 23:07 The End of the Twentieth Century 26:50 (Mis)Understanding 30:42 Credits

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Braschi’s novel resists translation both because it is already in translation—and translation cannot be translated—and because it touches on the untranslatable, on the limits of language and meaning.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 06:37 Translation, Movement, and Nonsense 11:11 Questions 16:05 Kairos and the Future Event 26:43 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Roberto Bolaño's post-dictatorship novel, Distant Star. With Ryan Long and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:04 Crime Fiction and Poetry Workshops 05:04 Correspondence and Investigation 09:44 Collaboration and Conversation 14:48 Violence Explicable and Inexplicable 18:39 Loss and Recovery 22:01 Writing and Reading 25:00 An Expanding Universe 26:43 Credits

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Literature can never forget that it is first and foremost an index of barbarism, and only secondarily (if at all) any kind of recompense or restitution.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 14:31 Art and Atrocity 15:42 Fascism's Contradictions 18:58 Questions 30:24 Ni Olvido, Ni Perdón 34:40 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Rigoberta Menchú's famed but controversial testimonio, I, Rigoberta Menchú. With John Beverley and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:30 Defining Testimonio 08:12 Testimonio's Contexts 12:41 A New Political Subject 18:13 The Culture Wars 23:31 The Politics of Truth 30:33 Testimonio Today 38:50 Credits

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However much we imagine or hope we are in solidarity with her and her struggle, we are reminded that the basis of that solidarity has to be difference and respect. Her struggle is not ours, and never will be.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 10:44 Private Pacts and Public Secrets 19:55 Questions 22:53 Captivation and Betrayal 33:28 Games of Entrapment 42:50 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Mario Vargas Llosa's comic novel, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. With Phil Swanson and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:19 Rethinking Civilization and Barbarism 10:44 The Business of Sex 14:38 A Shift from Left to Right 18:45 Technology and Form 23:18 Ambivalence and Multiple Readings 25:23 The Limits of Machismo 28:29 Credits

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In Vargas Llosa’s world, something is almost always fucked up—a death, a massacre, a marriage, a disappearance—and it is up to him or his characters to find out why and how.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 09:19 Making Fun of Seriousness 10:47 Questions 15:46 Taking Fun Seriously 28:08 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Clarice Lispector's last novel, The Hour of the Star. With Sonia Roncador and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:11 The Culmination of a Process 09:56 The Challenge of Unfamiliarity 18:42 The Limits of Realism 27:41 A Compulsion to Care 31:45 The Possibility of Hope 34:42 Credits

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It is about an ethics of writing, about how writing can be true to life, to “a life,” without necessarily laying claim to the truth of that life. It is about the hesitations, affirmations, and disruptive explosions that mark any text as it tries to describe and negotiate the world.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 11:03 A Hesitant Ethics 13:24 Questions 21:33 An Interrupted Consumption 31:06 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Gabriel García Márquez's most famous book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. With Gerald Martin and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:36 Approaching García Márquez 09:18 A Book that Anticipates its own Reading 13:00 A Book of Histories 21:08 A Book of Ambition 29:12 Meeting García Márquez 36:29 Credits

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It is perhaps because ultimately Macondo is so full of the ghosts of the motley cast of characters that have wandered through the book’s pages, that García Márquez can only put an end to it all by shouting “enough!” and bringing on a cataclysmic hurricane that tears the whole place down.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 03:38 Ruins as Destiny 07:22 Questions 10:45 Open and Shut 18:53 Multiple and Singular 26:14 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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The book militantly refuses regimentation, but is aware that “proliferation” can also be a “plague,” even as it flirts with excess at every turn.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 07:30 An Intricate Game of Confusion 14:34 Questions 16:43 A Gigantic Organization of Games of Luck and Chance 24:18 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Juan Rulfo's novel, Pedro Páramo. With Gareth Williams and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:07 A Singular Novel 06:53 Progress Curtailed 10:55 A Novel of Mexico? 12:56 A Novel of Survival 14:06 The Possibility of Escape? 16:56 Fascination and Rumour 21:03 The Afterlife of Pedro Páramo 24:37 The Experience of Tragedy 26:16 Credits

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Here, the signs and impact of the sovereign, the legacy of a bitter past, are everywhere to be seen. But he is haunted by murmurs, voices, that never entirely go away.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 03:37 Life, Death, and What Lies In Between 07:52 Questions 12:29 The Shadow of the Cacique 18:46 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Alejo Carpentier's novel of the Haitian Revolution, The Kingdom of This World. With Luis Duno-Gottberg and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction

01:03 Music and History

03:10 Latin American Difference

08:06 Unpacking Mestizaje

11:52 Ti Noël's Saga

17:17 An End to Flight

21:37 The Value of Struggle

26:04 Carpentier's Legacy

28:37 Credits

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It is the fact that in Haiti—and the Americas more generally—two (or more) perspectives rub up against each other and clash, shattering the notion that they can harmoniously be contained within the same organic totality, that provokes the surprised awe and wonder that Carpentier reports experiencing, and attempts to recreate in this novel.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 06:46 The Real Marvellous 10:24 Questions 17:54 History Replayed 27:48 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Jorge Luis Borges's collection of translated stories and other short texts, Labyrinths. With Daniel Balderston and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:37 Labyrinths 06:37 Genre 10:07 Sources 16:38 Fictions 20:23 Re-Reading 24:03 The Borges Center 27:03 How Borges Wrote 31:14 Credits

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Borges exposes secret complicities, as when apparent oppositions hide more fundamental similarities. But he is also concerned with how novelty and change emerge from repetition, how real difference arises from the most minor of variations.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 04:22 Undermining Difference 09:24 Questions 13:44 Questioning Similarity 22:04 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about the collection Madwomen: The Locas mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral. With Licia Fiol-Matta and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:20 Readings of Mistral 10:50 Disordering Desire 29:02 Normalizing Mistral 36:35 Credits

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Mistral takes advantage of her status as representative, and the representational capacities of language, to make visible the traces of what otherwise escapes the official order of things.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 03:24 Literary Value, Representation, and Iconicity 05:23 Questions 15:12 Doubles, Madness, and Femininity 23:37 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 and RMST 202 about Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. With Brianne Orr-Alvarez and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:14 Encountering Neruda 05:08 Giving Form to Emotion 09:15 An Absent Beloved? 17:53 Twilight and Poetic Voice 23:46 Credits

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A great writer not only writes great work, but also, more fundamentally and importantly, changes our sense of what great work is, and even charts a new role for the writer in society.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 02:51 This is Not a Love Song 05:50 Questions 15:16 Tonight I Can Write 27:15 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Nellie Campobello's novel of the Mexican Revolution, Cartucho. With Ryan Long and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:23 Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution 06:56 Sense and Senselessness 11:36 Intimacy and Care 16:16 Preservation and Memory 21:42 Unquiet Ghosts 26:11 Credits

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Campobello restores the idea that something was truly at stake in a conflict that can otherwise appear so chaotic and disorderly: at its best, it was fought for the right to play, to laugh, to feel, to be free from constraint.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 03:10 Fragmentation and the End of History 13:05 Questions 15:50 Play and the Revolution as Game 26:24 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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A conversation for SPAN 312 about Mariano Azuela's novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs (Los de abajo). With Ignacio Sánchez Prado and Jon Beasley-Murray.

For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/.

00:00 Introduction 01:27 Canonizing Insurgency 04:29 Making Sense of Villismo 09:05 War, Intensity, and Orality 16:39 Melancholy and Refusal 20:22 The Role of the Intellectual 23:24 Credits

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Azuela reveals aspects of the Revolution that are apolitical, anti-political, or even infrapolitical (the non-political conditions of possibility for the political), in that he depicts it in terms of drives and emergent habits that have not yet fully coalesced into political form.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 03:52 From Affect to Ideology 07:59 Questions 12:39 From Sublime Articulation to Infrapolitics 20:05 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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This is a “backwoods” history that aims, with gentle irony, to question the usual privileging of “civilization” over “barbarism” that otherwise structures most literary depictions of nineteenth-century Latin America.

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 01:48 Publication and Betrayal 06:24 Questions 12:14 Domination without Hegemony 20:58 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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What is the “play”—the “freedom, opportunity, or room for action; scope for activity”—that literature offers, once we realize that there is no one “right” way of reading?

By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia

00:00 Introduction 01:36 Playing with Context 11:36 Hopping from Theme to Method 14:49 Questions 23:20 Credits

For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/

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