Bodies of Water

Rivers, swimming pools, lakes, and oceans: these watery spaces recur with remarkable frequency in recent queer Latin American cinema, urging us to question the intimacies between queerness and the aquatic. Unpredictable and uncontrollable, water reflects a natural fluidity in our sexual desires and orientations; it is both a space and a substance, one in which bodies surrender themselves to the natural forces of currents and flows. As the first book to investigate water's queer cinematic potential, <i>Bodies of Water</i> proposes that we think not only <i>about</i> water but also <i>through</i> it, illuminating new directions for the study of queer world cinema and its evolving aesthetic strategies. <i>Bodies of Water</i> engages critically with theories of cinematic embodiment and recent work in queer theory and the environmental humanities, foregrounding a region of the world historically overlooked in global discussions of queerness. By examining the radical queer epistemologies that emerge at the convergence of body, camera, and water, <i>Bodies of Water</i> ultimately poses a question of both critical and sociopolitical concern: what's so queer about cinematic waters?