Spectacular Modernity: Dictatorship, Space, and Visuality in Venezuela, 1948-1958Winner, 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 Drawing on extensive archival research and presenting a wealth of previously unpublished visual materials, Blackmore revisits the decade-long dictatorship to unearth the spectacles of progress that offset repression and censorship.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. |
Contents
The Historiographical Foundations of Military Rule | |
NATION BRANDING | |
From Covert Propaganda to Corporate Publicity | |
Enframing the Landscape Training the Gaze | |
Common terms and phrases
advertisement aerial aesthetic archive Avenida Ávila Banco Obrero building Caracas Caracas’s Carlos Carlos Delgado Chalbaud Carlos Raúl Villanueva Catalá Central de Venezuela Centro Simón Bolívar Ciudad claim construction consumer culture Coronil country’s coup Cultura Urbana democracy dictablanda dictator’s dictatorship display El Nacional El Universal exhibition film gaze González Helicoide ideology images Información José Junta Militar Latin American Laureano Vallenilla Lanz Le Corbusier libretto London Marcos Pérez Jiménez Martín Frechilla Mendoza military leaders military regime military rule Ministerio Miss Venezuela modernist monumental narrative nation brand National Ideal newsreels November 24 Nuevo Ideal Nacional official discourse official libretto parades Patria photographs plans political progresa un pueblo projects promise public relations regime’s Revista del Banco rulers Semana Servicio Informativo Venezolano Simón Bolívar social improvement spectacles of progress spectacular modernity spectators superación superblocks Turén Universidad Central urban Venezuelan modernity Vicente Villanueva vision visual