Images Of Power

"To suggest that images have a privileged purchase on power," begin the editors, "is hardly an original proposition." Yet there is a dearth of scholarship on the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America. Andermann (Latin American Studies, U. of London) and Rowe (poetics, U. of London) compile 13 essays by many renown cultural, historical, and visual scholars which explore and critique the complex and inconstant relationships among images, cultures, and the nation-state in Latin America. Subjects of inquiry span the formation of a public sphere; avant-garde visual politics; mass society's influence on political images; and territory as a key icon of the state. Myriad b&w images (drawings, photos, paintings) included. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics at Birkbeck College, London. His book Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London, 1991) has been translated into several languages. His most recent works, apart from translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry, are Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life (Oxford, 2000) and Ensayos vallejianos (Berkeley and Lima, 2006).