In the spring of 2013, televisions across Venezuela announced the death of then-president Hugo Chávez, leader of the Bolivarian Revolution and key political actor in Latin America’s “turn to the left.” Chávez’s death, however, was not the end of Chávez’s life. In The Necromantic State, Irina R. Troconis examines how Chávez, as a “specter,” has lingered in Venezuela’s public, private, and digital spaces. Mobilizing an original methodological framework she calls "ghost h(a)unting" and focusing on contemporary Venezuela, Troconis examines a diverse and understudied corpus that includes tattoos, toys, memes, graffiti, phone cards, and a hologram haunting the streets of downtown Caracas, as she contends that, in moments of failed transitions, political tensions, and crises of legitimacy, the state brings the dead back to life to negotiate the terms of its survival. By showing how this necromantic performance enables the state’s material and visual manifestations in public and private spaces, Troconis untangles a sociopolitical moment in which the ghostly does not subvert or challenge official narratives, but rather acts as the affective, social, and political force that grounds state authority and ensures the preservation of the status quo, circumscribing in the process political imagination and limiting popular resistance.
Speaker Irina Troconis, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, Cornell university
Moderated by Alejandra Vela, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University and Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.
About the Speaker
Irina R. Troconis is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from New York University, and an MPhil Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK). Her areas of specialization include: Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, Visual Culture, Material Culture, and Digital Humanities. She is the co-organizer of the online conversation series (Re)thinking Venezuela/(Re)pensando a Venezuela, currently in its fifth season.
Professor Troconis’s first book, The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution (Duke University Press, 2025) explores through the lens of spectrality the memory narratives and practices developed around the figure of Hugo Chávez in the decade following his death. She is also working on three new research projects. The first one examines how the recent cultural production connected to the Venezuelan diaspora engages with issues of nostalgia, materiality, and loss. The second one considers the politics of reenactment in Latin America by analyzing a selection of performances and documentaries produced in the last thirty years. The third one explores the changes new technologies have triggered in the memory narratives, practices, and theories that shape contemporary Latin American fiction.
The Arts & Humanities Workshop Series fosters scholarly discussions centered on the work of leading academics in the fields of the Arts & Humanities.
LOCATION:CGIS South, Room S216 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250325T213000Z DTEND:20250325T233000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR