CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Christian Wehr Apocalypse, historical transition, and globalization in Latin America.
From the early modern period to the present day, key phases of Latin American history have been repeatedly mediated through apocalyptic images and narrative patterns. The representations of the conquista as the biblical end of the world have established a model of historical interpretation and construction that has varied countless times over the course of half a millennium. Ultimately, this striking persistence of imagining the end of the world suggests that the perception of historical processes in Latin America has never been able to completely detach itself from its original trauma; the foundation of post-Columbian history cannot be separated from the extinction of a formerly existing world and its cultures. In this perspective, the project will examine various apocalyptic constructions of history in Latin American literature and essay writing, as well as in film from Columbus to the present.