CEDLA Lecture with Dr. Sian Lazar, Department of Anthropology, Clare College (Cambridge, UK)

Discussant: Prof. dr. Michiel Baud, CEDLA

Street demonstrations are a common form of political action across Latin America. In this paper I explore some aspects of their symbolic and experiential power. I focus on ideas of physical and visual intertextuality and their importance in the construction of political agency. I do so through an examination of the symbolic and aesthetic experiential politics of dances, parades and demonstrations in Bolivia, suggesting that similarities between these practices constitute a kind of citation, which enables each to partake of the symbolic power and resonance of the others. I then move to investigate the political and symbolic work done in Argentine demonstrations by visual (and possibly auditory) intertextuality across practices separated by time.