Since independence from Spain, a trope has remained pervasive in Latin America's republican imaginary: that of an endless antagonism pitting civilization against barbarism as irreconcilable poles within which a nation's life unfolds. This book apprehends that trope not just as the phantasmatic projection of postcolonial elites fearful of the popular sectors but also as a symptom of a stubborn historical predicament: the cyclical insistence with which the subaltern populations menacingly return to the nation's public spaces in the form of crowds. Focused on Venezuela but relevant to the rest...

Since independence from Spain, a trope has remained pervasive in Latin America's republican imaginary: that of an endless antagonism pitting civilization against barbarism as irreconcilable poles within which a nation's life unfolds. This book apprehends that trope not just as the phantasmatic projection of postcolonial elites fearful of the popular sectors but also as a symptom of a stubborn historical predicament: the cyclical insistence with which the subaltern populations menacingly return to the nation's public spaces in the form of crowds.

Focused on Venezuela but relevant to the...