VISIONS OF THE END: TIME FOR REVOLT, TIME FOR INTERRUPTION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Gustavo Alberto Quintero Lozano August 2018 © 2018 Gustavo Alberto Quintero Lozano VISIONS OF THE END: TIME FOR REVOLT, TIME FOR INTERRUPTION Gustavo Alberto Quintero Lozano, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 This dissertation is a critical examination of the temporalities that posit a profound radical cut in the present as the precondition for the emergence of a new era of sociality and politics in Latin America, in particular, in Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico. This is an immanent critique of these articulations of time that I label under the name of messianic temporalities. In particular, I contend that the messianic organization of time in Latin America demands a serious study as an analytical concept useful for addressing the question of the future of struggles for freedom. I advance the notion of messianic temporalities as a means to interrogate and reactivate the logics of a radical transformation of the present. In this dissertation, I provide a critical mapping of the shape and effects of the messianic within Latin American political structure through its aesthetic production that ranges from literary materials to contemporary art and experimental video. Ultimately, I assert the importance of distancing ourselves from this concept in order to address new temporalities of revolt that break with a present order that does not seem to end. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Gustavo Quintero obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Literature and a Master of Arts in Literature and Philosophy from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. He obtained a Master of Arts from Cornell University. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University. iii A Tata y Gona. Porque lo que se perdió siempre se lleva. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project is a debt of gratitude to my grandfather, who died in 2007 and left me in a world too big to assimilate. He passed away a few hours before I returned to Bogotá after a tumultuous year in Paris. I came back to my devastated grandmother, to my grieving family, and I was able to attend his burial. Once, he told me that I should read books because they offered me the opportunity to imagine how the characters looked like. Ever since then, throughout the years I have been lucky enough to receive invaluable support from friends and colleagues. I would especially like to thank my graduate committee members, for their support, guidance, and patience. Simone Pinet was an incredibly attentive reader, who clearly pointed towards those ideas that my texts merely suggested. Raymond Craib, through his candid comments, brought a much-needed historical perspective to my arguments. Tracy McNulty, with her precision and carefulness, was indispensable for me to bring forth the questions, problems, and concerns that are the basis for the enquiries that I present in this dissertation. I would like to give special thanks to my committee chair, Bruno Bosteels. His constant support in my intellectual project, his rigorous comments, and his generosity when it came to find a methodical approach for writing my chapters, was truly indispensable in my formation as a scholar. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had an advisor who showed me the value of independence in research. I am deeply indebted to Maria del Rosario Acosta, at DePaul University, for her generosity and encouragement over the years. Her careful organization of theoretical reflections, as well as her unwavering intellectual quests have been examples of how to be as a researcher and as a professor. Few of us have been lucky enough to learn from her. Although in less direct, but equally important ways, many people have helped me in this process, Patty Keller, Cathy Caruth, Diane Brown, and Edmundo Paz-Soldán have deeply influenced parts of the argumentation of this project. Sheila Singh kept me sane during my PhD. v Because of their friendship and enriching discussions throughout the crazy years at Cornell, I would like to thank Andrea Mendoza, Pauline Goul, Vincent Guimiot, Janet Hendrickson, Sebastián Antezana, Keiji Kunigami, Vinh Pham, Elize Finielz, Bret Leraul, Andrew Harding, Valente Ramírez, Julius Lagodny, Pauliina Patana, Abram Coetsee and Karla Peña. One way or another, they all have contributed to this project. Thank you, to all of you. From the distance, many have rewarded me with their friendship, which I hold dear and it has meant for me more than I could say here. Camila Osorio has been my sister and my fellow traveler throughout the intricacies of this foreign country. May our friendship last for many, many, many years. Santiago Arias, Daniel Marroquín, Francisco Rodríguez, Tanilo Errázuriz, Jairo Hoyos, Lina Duarte, Camilo Casallas, and Luis Carlos Suárez have been wonderful companions along the way. This work is also an outcome of their encouragements. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful towards my mother, Claudia, and my father, Alberto, who unconditionally believed in me no matter how bizarre this career choice might have seemed. To my brother, Fefo: every day I try to be a better person and a better brother for you. To all three of them, every single word of this dissertation exists because of you. To Jesse, whose generous and loving soul has brightened my life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v Introduction 1 Messianisms and Messiahs: Figures of the Continuum of History and its Ruptures 4 Exhaustion, Interruption, and Hope: Approaching Ruptures 9 EXHAUSTION 12 I. Messianic Promises of Radical Futures in Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s The Last Supper 14 1. The Messianic Shroud of Fidel Castro 20 2. The Daily life at the Casa Bayona and the Holy Week 24 3. Would Jesus Want to Sit Once Again at the Table with the Apostles? 27 4. The Hostia and the Pig 31 5. The Revolt and the Death of Jesus 35 II. A Land Left Behind by The Messiah: The Ruins of Eternity in Antonio José Ponte 38 1. The Commodification of the Ruin 41 2. The Ruin and Its History 46 3. A Man Walks into the Temporality of the Never 55 4. The Cuban Project of Utopia: or the Faint Echoes of Futures Past 58 INTERRUPTION 65 III. José Alejandro Restrepo’s “The Knight of Faith”: Resignation in Front of the Bloodbath 73 1. On Nearly-Divine Violence 73 2. A Man Feeds the Birds, Eleven Bodies are Still Missing 78 3. The Knight of Faith and the Bird Feeding Man 84 4. Katechontic Messianism 88 IV. El Frente Unido in “La hora Cero de Colombia”: Camilo Torres’ Calling 96 1. Revolutionary Legacies of Camilo Torres 98 2. El Frente Unido: When the Ordinary Becomes the Extraordinary 102 3. Addressing the People: The Newspaper frente unido 108 4. Love, Praxis, and Interruption: Torres Beyond Torres 112 5. Temporalities in Conflict and the Future in Question 116 vii HOPE 120 V. The Stubborn Hope of The Plain in Flames: Beyond a Time of Failed Miracles 123 1. History, Choices, and Grievances in The Plain in Flames 126 2. The Stubbornness of Hope 132 3. “Nos han dado la tierra”: Waiting for the Weak Transcendence 137 4. “Talpa”: When a Miracle is Far from Enough 143 VI. Nadie es Inocente and Alma Punk: The Experimental Images of the No-Future 152 1. The Devastation of the década perdida and the Emergence of Experimental Video 153 2. Slums, the Ordered City, and the Image: Giving Shape to Conjunctures 158 3. Giving Shape to a Time of No-Future 165 4. Escape from Nezayork: Dreaming Beyond the Border 169 Figures of Time: Reaching a Conclusion 174 Works Cited 178 viii Introduction Ours is a time in which right-wing political movements are rising on a global scale. As this last shape of the neoliberal rationale takes hold, representative democracies seem unable to repel this threat. Yet, at the same time, we hear that rapid technological and economic development is the path to achieve progress. These would seem to go hand-in-hand with the fulfillment of democratic ideals. Such politico-historical imaginary, which is nothing other than a slightly reinvented teleological conception of history, fosters the ravages of the neoliberal onslaught with its recent fascist nuances. This imaginary rests upon an organization of time –understood as the way we collectively relate the past, the present, and the future– that claims to grasp the true meaning and sense of history. The linear and homogenous trajectory of progress depicts the future as an improved version of the present based on the premise of individual investment, debt, and profit. Such imaginary of history saturates any expectation about the future with the present political order, and in so doing, it rigs out any conception of a radical change taking place. The very thought of the future fails to depict a scenario other than the repetition of this grim present; it only appears as a story told over and over with slight variations. It seems that we are only able to ask: what is to be done? It has already become commonplace to suggest that a disavowed teleology persists after the fall of grand narratives of emancipation. Yet, precisely because this widespread and powerful imaginary posits a linear sense of history in which past, present, and future follow an unbreakable continuum, conceptions of future emancipations have become saturated with an imprecise temporality. These depictions seem more akin to be doubtful utopian thoughts than possible sociopolitical alternatives. Throughout this dissertation, I claim that, it is the very conception of 1 chronological time as measure to trace how the present follows natural single direction what obscures creative forms of political struggle that conceive the future other than the linear outcome from the present order.