Two Scenes of Deferred Modernity: a Reading from Latin American Urban Imaginaries #1011829

This excerpt is part of the volume Visual Narratives, Aesthetics and Decoloniality: Imagery and the Construction of the ‘Other’. Vol. 1 – Decolonial Aesthetics, Ontologies and Epistemologies, edited by Tomás Cajueiro and Estevão Bosco, published by Ventura Edizioni.


1. City/letter: two intertwined histories. An introduction
The city and the written word seem to weave their stories as parallel plots that, time and again, intertwine until they fork again in a gesture of manifest estrangement. The vicissitudes of the shaping of urban imaginaries and literary ossification —styles, groups of authors, editorial devices, the configuration of new audiences, etc.— trace the coordinates of the ideological dimension which aspired to spiritually unite the motley societies of modernity.