Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and State in Latin America

Front Cover
Jens Andermann, William Rowe
Berghahn Books, 2005 - Art - 299 pages

In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.

 

Contents

The Mexican Codices and the Visual Language of Revolution
36
Gender Class and History
51
Tradition and Amnesia in
78
The Work
99
Tango and Samba Images
127
Internationalist Nationalism
145
Caboclos
165
the Casasola Archive
195
Bastardised Iconographies of
217
Longrange Technology
241
Nomadic Tourists and Cultural
255
Reflections
271
Notes on Contributors
291
Copyright

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About the author (2005)

William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, London. His book Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991) has been translated into several languages. His most recent works, apart from translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry, are Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life (Oxford, 2000) and Ensayos vallejianos (Berkeley and Lima, 2006).