Toying with the Comandante

Chapter 4, “Toying with the Comandante,” analyzes how spectrality operates in relation to acts of repetition, reproduction, and remembrance. It focuses on Hugo Chávez’s “doubles,” which include Chávez dolls and figurines, his hologram, the birds and butterflies that Maduro claimed were Chávez’s reincarnation, Maduro’s imitation of Chávez, and memes of a man and a woman who “went viral” because of their resemblance to Chávez. The chapter argues that the state’s efforts to reproduce Chávez repeatedly fail and lead to the widening of the void left by his absence. Threatened with the imminence of its collapse, the state has no choice but to appeal to people’s playful imagination to reanimate the specter on which it has grounded its legitimacy. This reanimation, the chapter concludes, depends on the transformation of Chávez into a toy, and on the worlds toys open up, worlds where death can be overcome and agency appears unconstrained and magical.