Pablo Quintero
pquintero@filo.uba.ar
Universidad de Buenos Aires / CONICET, Argentina
Abstract:
This paper explores the formation of racial democracy myth in Venezuela, by analysing Venezuelan novel Doña Bárbara, by Rómulo Gallegos. Published for the first time in 1929, this novel is one of the foundational works both of the racial democracy myth and contemporary arrangements of national identity in Venezuela. The analysis here developed links the projective role of criollo elite’s national designs to power coloniality’s reconfiguration and consolidation in the 20th century Venezuela. Similarly, representational practices contained in the work are examined here, as well as civilizing technologies proposed there as a solution to the problem of the so-called «barbarism» in Venezuelan society and nature.
Keywords: Modernity, coloniality, racial democracy, modernist literature, Rómulo Gallegos, Venezuela.
