The Insubordination of Photography. Documentary Practices Under Chile's Dictatorship by Ángeles Donoso Macaya (review)

Abstract

six, “Fiction and Reality,” analyzes how, in highlighting its own constructed nature, contemporary Venezuelan fiction encourages its readers to question the official narratives and ideals promoted by the Bolivarian government. Brown masterfully weaves together her analysis of the novels and the cultural, political, and social context that frames them. She thus allows for her readers—whether they are familiar or not with the Venezuelan reality—to understand not only the operations of the Venezuelan literary system, but also how the novels discussed enter in a productive dialogue with broader debates regarding literary movements in Latin America, the relationship between literature and new technologies, and the subversive potential of metafiction. Though she offers a wellresearched and thorough account of the cultural policies that the Bolivarian Revolution introduced and often cites Sesto’s public statements, Chávez’s central role in shaping the Revolution’s cultural vision and his own experimentations with literature (which include the publication in 2012 of Cuentos del arañero) are mostly absent, only appearing briefly in chapter six. This omission productively challenges the often reductive and oversimplifying assumption that “Chávez is the Revolution”; however, it also overlooks the ways in which the novels are responding to Chávez’s own fictional rhetoric and the seemingly endless act of storytelling that framed his political performance. Overall, Brown’s work is an invaluable contribution to the study of contemporary Venezuelan literature that is certain to inspire other academic works on the topic, and that will appeal to readers interested not only in Venezuela and Venezuelan literature, but also in contemporary Latin American literature and the literature of the diaspora.