Noir and the Affects of

Mexican Modernity
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Washington University in St Louis
E-mail: isanchez@wustl.edu
Twitter: @isanchezprado
Christopher Breu and
Elizabeth A Hatmaker,
eds. Noir Affect.
Fordham University
Press, 2020.
 Three Levels of Noir
• Noir Form: “a material crystallization of the crossroads between historicity and
affect, in the textual, the visual, the televisual, the cinematic and/or the mediatic”
• Noir Mediascape: “the expansion of information technologies has turned the
traces and marks of that concrete mode into a language to engage different
experiences of modernization.”
• Sociological Noir (Flanagan): “the way in which evil and the dark and spectral
forces of society “irrupt” into the space of modernity”
• Zizek: “that “film noir is none the less a concept in the strict Hegelian sense:
something that cannot simply be explained, accounted for in terms of historical
circumstances, conditions and reactions, but acts a structuring principle that
displays a dynamic of its own.”
Distinto amanecer vs Flor Silvestre
Distinto amanecer
Ensayo de un crimen
Noir towards the present
Llamenme Mike
Llamenme Mike