Spectacle in a Global Nineteenth Century

(Panel / In-Person)

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Special Session
Visual and Spatial Studies / World Literatures and Comparative Studies

Brendan Lanctot (University of Puget Sound)
blan@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel proposes exploring the myriad forms of exhibiting images that emerged over the course of a long nineteenth century in a transnational context. These might include, but are not limited to, phenomena such as magic lantern shows, dioramas, panoramas, cosmoramas, stereography, stereopticons, and early cinema. We are equally interested in examining these spectacles as sites for the production and consumption of images and as widely used rhetorical figures referring to mental and social processes in literature. Beyond the commonplace notion that such phenomena constituted “imported magic” from the metropolises of the industrialized North Atlantic, how might we rethink the emergence of new spectacles in relation to existing visual cultures and as adopted or modified by local actors? How might rethinking spectacle help make visible different patterns of exchange in a century that witnessed a proliferation of technologies for capturing, projecting, and reproducing images?

In his Techniques of the Observer (1990) and Suspensions of Perception (1999), Jonathan Crary argues that a new dominant model of modern spectatorship emerged over the course of the nineteenth century, marking a decisive break from prior modes of visuality. This account of a “sweeping transformation” (Techniques 7) echoes conventional, master narratives of modernity and, as Paul North has noted, relies on a notion of history “as the uniform ground against which change can be seen” (The Problem of Distraction 186). Such a “dominant” model is intrinsically Eurocentric and encounters limitations the farther we stray from the metropolises that are its focal points. Frequently it reduces the introduction and reception of new visual technologies and related spectacles to a collection of anecdotes concerning the belated arrival of foreign imports captivating excited but ultimately passive audiences in the Global South. In the context of Latin America, for example, Melquiades bringing the daguerreotype to the inhabitants of Macondo in García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad provides a paradigmatic, if fictitious version of this encounter. The goal of this panel is to rethink spectacle in a global context as a way of better understanding what Julio Ramos has referred to as “divergent modernities.” How do phenomena such as magic lantern shows, dioramas, panoramas, cosmoramas, stereography, stereopticons, and early cinema appear in various colonial and post-colonial contexts throughout the nineteenth century? What are the different networks of exchange or circulation in which these shows are organized, promoted, and discussed outside of a simplistic center-periphery framework? As Jurgen Osterhammel notes in his global history of the nineteenth century, the periodization of that phrase is elastic and it functions as shorthand for diverse sociopolitical processes in different regional contexts. With this in mind, this panel aspires to offer a comparative framework for understanding the configuration of modern spectators according to local contingencies.