Enchanted Commons and Politics of Possession:

A Reading of Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Soledad (Venezuela, 2016)

Authors

Keywords:

documentary fiction, possession, property, enchantment, Venezuela

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Soledad (Venezuela, 2016), a film shot in cinema-verité style, portrays an ambiguous form of tenancy that destabilizes the conventional idea of private property ownership and stages a conflict between notions of private and common that bear upon the state of housing access in present-day Venezuela. Furthermore, I show how the film articulates this conflict by invoking an imaginary of enchantment entangled with the idea of possession in a spiritual sense (suggesting the presence of an entity within another), and insofar as possession suggests a type of relationship different from property.

Author Biography

Elvira Blanco Santini, Columbia University

Elvira Blanco Santini is a PhD. Candidate in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University in New York, where she is writing a dissertation titled “Imaginaries of the Common in Contemporary Venezuela (2010-2021).” Her work lives at the intersection of Latin American cultural studies––with an emphasis on the Greater Caribbean––, film and visual studies, and political history and theory.

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Published

2023-02-22

How to Cite

Blanco, E. (2023). Enchanted Commons and Politics of Possession: : A Reading of Jorge Thielen Armand’s La Soledad (Venezuela, 2016). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 20(2), 6–24. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/2227

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Section

Articles / Artículos