Under the Specter's Gaze Available to Purchase

Chapter 2, “Under the Specter’s Gaze,” focuses on the stencil of Hugo Chávez’s eyes. The first section analyzes Chávez’s “pre-posthumous haunting”: the excessive reproduction of Chávez’s images and words in the years preceding his death, as shown in Jonás Romero García’s documentary FANtasmo (2009). The chapter argues that this pre-posthumous haunting facilitated Chávez’s lingering as a surveilling spectral presence after his death, and allowed the eyes to uneventfully populate the nation’s landscape and political vocabulary. The second section traces the memory narratives and practices shaping the creation and reproduction of the eyes and the temporally dislocated authority that materialized through them during and after Venezuela’s 2012 presidential elections. Lastly, the chapter discusses the most recent iterations of the eyes developed by government supporters and the opposition, and analyzes how the eyes’ endurance and adaptability contribute to the transformation of the political subject into a haunted subject.