The Necromantic State

In the spring of 2013, televisions across Venezuela announced the death of then-President Hugo Chvez, leader of the Bolivarian Revolution and key political actor in Latin Americas turn to the left. Chvezs death, however, was not the end of Chvezs life. In The Necromantic State, Irina R. Troconis examines how Chvez, as a specter, has lingered in Venezuelas 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 states 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.