Neobaroque Festino: Modern Italy and Latin American postmodernity

This essay argues that the idea of postmodernity has undergone a cultural shift that bears strong analogies to the history of the word 'metaphysics': what was initially an empty term of textual classification has been progressively turned into a cultural concept by way of theoretical saturation. The metaphysics of modernity that underpins this shift is traced back to the logic of the Italian Baroque, and it is deconstructed through the history of the Neobaroque in Latin American culture. Moving beyond the recursive definitions of postmodernity and its conflation with postmodernism, the essay puts forward a description of its cultural logic as a Neobaroque 'festino', while inviting new possibilities of interpretation from the visual arts and music.