Congratulations to Dr. Giancarlo Fiorella, who successfully defended his thesis “Spectralities at the Protest Chronotope: Venezuela’s Colectivos and the Opposition Social Imaginary,” on May 9th, 2023. Giancarlo’s thesis was passed “as is.”
Giancarlo’s provocative and beautifully written thesis examines the pluralism and indeterminacy of political protest and their repression by security actors in contemporary Venezuela through the figure of the colectivo, which is often portrayed reductively in the media and popular discourse as pro-government armed militias. Drawing on harrowing interviews and hard hitting online UGC (user generated content), he shows how the colectivo is so much more complex, as an historical social actor and interpretive artifact of experiences of collective violence.
Supervisor Professor Beatrice Jauregui thanks the members of the examining committee, including Professor David Allen Smilde (External Examiner, Department of Sociology, Tulane University), Professor Christopher Krupa (Internal/External Examiner, Department of Anthropology), the committee members, Professor Kevin O’Neill (Departments of Religion and Anthropology, CDTS) and Professor Gail Super (Department of Sociology), as well as the Defence Chair, Professor Sridhar Moorthy (Rotman School of Management).