The César Manrique Foundation (FCM) will host on Thursday, June 18, at 7:30 p.m., the conference titled Islands as a Simulacrum: Identity Aesthetics and the Consumption of the Past, which will be given by Carmen Marina Barreto Vargas, professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of La Laguna. The event will take place in the Sala José Saramago (La Plazuela, Arrecife) and will be broadcast live on the FCM's website and YouTube channel.
Barreto will reflect on the instrumentalization of Canarian cultural identity through the production of aesthetic imaginaries that allude to idealized pasts. The anthropologist will explain why, in her opinion, the aestheticization of the past and its consumption are shown as a device of legitimation, where identity is articulated through a palimpsest of strategically selected memories to justify projects of governance or resistance.
In this regard, it will analyze how the use of representations of Canarianness no longer seeks historiographical fidelity, but the creation of a spectacle-identity that simplifies social tensions in favor of symbolic cohesion. According to the speaker, the aestheticization of the past functions as a tool of social engineering, where culture is reduced to a repertoire of signs available for the validation of the hegemonic political discourse in contemporary society of the simulacrum.
Carmen Marina Barreto's presentation is included within the "Foro Archipiélago" space of the FCM. This is a space for reflection on the culture, science, and environment of the Canary Islands through researchers, intellectuals, and creators who develop their work on the Islands, and which has already featured the presence of Juan José Falcón Sanabria, Telesforo Bravo, Joaquín Sabaté Bel, Selena Millares, Juan José Armas Marcelo, Nilo Palenzuela, Roque Calero, Alexis Ravelo, among others, and recently, Lidia Romero.
Carmen Marina Barreto Vargas is a Full Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and former dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and the Center for African Studies at the University of La Laguna (ULL). She directs the Gender Equality Unit of said University and coordinates the Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife (MHAT), belonging to the Autonomous Body of Museums and Centers of the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife.
Her research ranges from references to identities and processes of exoticization, colonialism and decoloniality, body, senses, gender, heritage, and ontology of objects. She has participated in numerous national and international congresses, as well as in different research and educational innovation projects. Furthermore, she is part of the interuniversity research group "La Experiencia Turística: Imagen, Cuerpo y Muerte en la Cultura del Ocio" (The Tourist Experience: Image, Body, and Death in Leisure Culture). She is a member of the University Institute for Women's Studies of the ULL and a professor in the Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies.
Among her latest publications are: "Odiseas patrimoniales y museologías feministas" (Heritage Odysseys and Feminist Museologies); "La isla por venir: espacios en transformación y sentimientos de pertenencia" (The Island to Come: Spaces in Transformation and Feelings of Belonging); "El museo es el souvenir: nostalgias turísticas y patrimonio cultural" (The Museum is the Souvenir: Tourist Nostalgias and Cultural Heritage); "Sacralizando la identidad: objetos rituales y patrimonio emocional en la Bajada de la Virgen de las Nieves de La Palma" (Sacralizing Identity: Ritual Objects and Emotional Heritage in the Bajada de la Virgen de las Nieves of La Palma).
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