Populism and Performance

• In Event: Performance and Politics in the Americas: Emergent Approaches, Resistant Encounters

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, new forms of populist democracy have emerged in Latin America that potentially tip the scales of hemispheric power. This paper focuses on the cultural practices that shape these changing forms of democracy in popular performance. It argues that networks of production in these performances inform understandings of populism that emerged in the turn to a socialist revolution with its examples and case point in the Chávez era of Venezuela. It examines these networks as alternative and overlapping forms of governance that contend with and advance understanding around the central debates of populism: issues of exclusion and inclusion, social boundaries, public space, participation and cultural perceptions of charisma and leadership.

Author

• Angela Marino, University of California/ Berkeley