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Session Submission Summary

Re-Mapping Machu Picchu: towards a theory of ruins in the Latin American and U.S. imaginary

Fri, May 27, 12:45 to 2:15pm, TBA

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This table aims to explore Machu Picchu from the analysis of different rhetorics, art, communication, archeology and anthropology, where the ruins appear as vestiges that transcend geographical and architectural space and achieve wider social, historical and poetic meaning. A little over a hundred years after Bingham's discovery, encountering Machu Picchu continues to be as astonishing as it is meaningful for modern society. An interdisciplinary look allows us to delineate an aesthetic of the fragmentary and develop a theory of ruins in both the Latin American and U.S. imaginary. The questions that the panel intends to develop are: What meanings does Machu Picchu evoke today? In what ways do the Machu Picchu ruins continue to move us and how have they been reconceptualized over time and within different Latin American and American cultures? How have modern communication technologies and practices played a role in imagining and reimagining Machu Picchu? How has the concept of absence developed through various representation of the ruins? What is the aesthetic project that hides the fragmentary writing of the place?

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