Another recent book that has been indexed by Southwest Humanities will be published very soon. Irina R. Troconis’s The Necromantic State: Spectral Remains in the Afterglow of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution (Duke University Press, 2025) will be released on 28 February 2025. In The Necromantic State, Troconis investigates the lingering specter of Hugo Chávez in a range of spaces in Venezuela, focusing on the ways that the state has resurrected, or rather, brought Chávez back to life in order to consolidate and maintain its power in the face of a failed, or at least incomplete revolution. Examining the ways that Chávez remains in such cultural sources as tattoos and toys, graffiti, memes, and holograms, Troconis provides a perspicacious analysis of how such haunting “grounds state authority and ensures the preservation of the status quo, as it circumscribes acts of political imagination and limits popular resistance.” This book will be of interest to readers and scholars of Latin American studies, particularly in the areas of politics, culture, and history, as well as those interested in Venezuela or Hugo Chávez in particular. For more information, please see the publisher’s website here.