Desire as Empire

Constructing the Emotional Infrastructure of U.S. Empire through Consumption of Maya Culture

Desire as Empire investigates how U.S. fascination with Maya culture helped construct the emotional infrastructure of empire in twentieth-century Guatemala, revealing how longing, aesthetics, and consumption shaped imperial encounters.

Desire as Empire argues that U.S. empire in Latin America was built not only through political intervention and economic influence but through emotion. The book traces how Maya culture was curated, displayed, collected, and consumed by U.S. tourists, corporations, artists, and cultural institutions, turning Guatemala into a site of desire and shaping the terms of cross-cultural encounter.

By foregrounding desire as an imperial force, the book reveals how objects, images, textiles, landscapes, and performances of Indigeneity were made consumable for foreign audiences. This process created an “emotional infrastructure” of empire—an aesthetic and affective framework that naturalized unequal relationships of power while circulating fantasies of authenticity, discovery, and intimacy.

Rather than relying on traditional geopolitical or diplomatic explanations, Desire as Empire shows how boutique imperialism operated through intimate, curated experiences and the everyday pleasures of looking, buying, collecting, and imagining.

Desire as Empire explores:

  • how desire functions as a soft technology of U.S. empire

  • the emotional infrastructures embedded in tourism, collecting, and display

  • the circulation of curated images of Maya culture for foreign consumption

  • how objects, landscapes, and performances were transformed into consumable fantasies

  • the mechanisms and aesthetics of boutique imperialism

  • the relationship between longing, aesthetics, and unequal power

Status and timeline:

Status: Proposal submitted to University of Nebraska Press
Timeline: Ongoing manuscript revision; expected completion in 2026