Projections of Power in the Americas is an international, inter-university publication project, which has as its primary objective to investigate the ways in which power or the discourse of power is represented in or projected onto society (or segments of society) in the Americas.

Despite the fact that ‘power’ is arguably a central concept in political discourse, it is also essentially contested. Nevertheless, common to all definitions – from Thomas Hobbes mechanistic view of the relationship between cause and effect to Michel Foucault’s analysis of the relations of knowledge and power is that power is the ability of one agent or agency to affect the actions, attitudes and perceptions of others as a means of determining the prevailing discourse in society. Power and agency thus become closely interrelated, with a highly diverse field of operation and encompassed within a range of disciplines, such as history, political science and cultural studies, as well as interdisciplinary approaches.

The current project will involve discussions of the framing of political discourses, symbolic representations of presidential power, iconography, the struggle over collective memories and the counter-strategies involved in notions of empowerment.