Body Cultures: the Venezuelan Holy Family

In this article, I propose reading the body as a privileged space to debate Venezuelan politics. I expose the violent metaphorical and allegorical operations that manage to disfigure the national bodies, taking them to the very limits of monstrosity before normalizing them. Notwithstanding the compulsion to denounce the political adversary that defiles the Venezuelan ‘holy’ family, the need to preserve the national body par excellence is stronger than these differences and the incidental possession of power. The bodies that make up this national family are problematic productions that offer little space for other bodies and sensibilities to destabilize, revise, or re-articulate the Venezuelan nation’s most conservative values.