Spectacular Modernity: Dictatorship, Space, and Visuality in Venezuela, 1948-1958 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780822964384)

Winner, 2018 LASA Venezuela Section Fernando Coronil Award

In cultural history, the 1950s in Venezuela are commonly celebrated as a golden age of modernity, realized by a booming oil economy, dazzling modernist architecture, and nationwide modernization projects. But this is only half the story. In this path-breaking study, Lisa Blackmore reframes the concept of modernity as a complex cultural formation in which modern aesthetics became deeply entangled with authoritarian politics. Drawing on extensive archival research and presenting a wealth of previously unpublished visual materials, Blackmore revisits the decade-long dictatorship to unearth the spectacles of progress that offset repression and censorship. Analyses of a wide range of case studies--from housing projects to agricultural colonies, urban monuments to official exhibitions, and carnival processions to consumer culture--reveal the manifold apparatuses that mythologized visionary leadership, advocated technocratic development, and presented military rule as the only route to progress. Offering a sharp corrective to depoliticized accounts of the period, Spectacular Modernity instead exposes how Venezuelans were promised a radically transformed landscape in exchange for their democratic freedoms.

Author: Lisa Blackmore
ISBN-10: 0822964384
ISBN-13: 9780822964384
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Language: English
Published: 05/10/2017
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2017