ICM NEW BOOKS SERIES

IRINA TROCONIS (Associate Professor, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University)

The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution

A conversation with Cornell faculty member Irina Troconis about her new book, The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution (Duke UP, 2025)

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 The Necromantic State, 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.

IRINA TROCONIS is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from New York University, and an MPhil Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK). Her areas of specialization include: Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, Visual Culture, Material Culture, and Digital Humanities. She is the co-organizer of the online conversation series (Re)thinking Venezuela/(Re)pensando a Venezuela, currently in its fifth seasonrina R. Troconis is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Romance Studies. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures from New York University, and an MPhil Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK). Her areas of specialization include: Memory Studies, Venezuelan Studies, Politics and Performance, Affect Theory, Visual Culture, Material Culture, and Digital Humanities. She is the co-organizer of the online conversation series (Re)thinking Venezuela/(Re)pensando a Venezuela, currently in its fifth season.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Join graduate student writers to share goals and write in community. The writing workshop will begin with group introductions and a moment to share what we're working on. The bulk of the time will then be dedicated to writing in community and end with the opportunity to share what you accomplished with a supportive group of peers. For those who can't make it at 5 pm, feel free to drop in at any point.

This writing group, while open to all graduate and professional students, aims to make a place for multilingual writers in particular.

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Sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and Latina/o Studies Program.

All Welcome!

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Guadelupe Pinzón is one of Mexico’s leading maritime historians. Her work expands Mexico’s territory into both the Caribbean and the Pacific, thus offering an uncommon approach to Mexican history. In this conversation Dr. Pinzón and Ernesto Bassi will speak about how thinking of Mexico’s maritime space reframes Mexican history, as well as about the opportunities and challenges of doing maritime history from Mexican shores and the prospects of a maritime history of Latin America. Monday's conversation will be in Spanish, and Pinzón will also be giving a talk in English on Tuesday, March 4 titled "From the Atlantic to the Pacific: Interoceanic Connections through Tehuantepec and Nicaragua in the Late 18th Century."

Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos is a Doctor in History from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, where she is currently a researcher and professor at the Institute for Historical Research. Pinzón Ríos is also a member of the National System of Researchers and an advisor of the graduate program in history. She has been studying maritime port activities throughout the Pacific, especially in New Spain, and has published Acciones y reacciones en los puertos del Mar del Sur. Desarrollo portuario del Pacífico novohispano a partir de sus políticas defensivas (1713-1789) and Hombres de mar en las costas novohispanas. Trabajos, trabajadores y vida portuaria en el departamento marítimo de San Blas (siglo XVIII). She also has various published works, articles, and book chapters.

Co-sponsored by Romance Studies, Science & Technology Studies, and Society for the Humanities.