The Necromantic State

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 <i>The Necromantic State</i> Irina R. Troconis examines how Chávez as a specter has lingered in Venezuela's public private and digital spaces. Focusing on contemporary Venezuela and drawing from a diverse corpus that includes tattoos toys memes graffiti and a hologram haunting the streets of downtown Caracas Troconis 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 acts as the affective social and political force that grounds state authority and ensures the preservation of the status quo as it circumscribes acts of political imagination and limits popular resistance.