Epilogue

Abstract

The Universal Exposition of 1900 not only closed the nineteenth century but also the cycle that saw Paris as the center for great exhibitions. In the course of the second half of the nineteenth century the French capital was the site of the most important exhibitions, held at a regular decade of intervals in 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, and 1900, of which the latter two, as I have shown, concentrated the most significant investment of Latin American nation-states in their self-representations, and then the involvement of Latin American modern writers. The 1900 Paris Exposition was therefore the end of the French monopoly of international expositions and also it proved to be the end of an era of great exhibitions as such. A transnational public discourse had developed and spread with regards to the meaning and function of exhibitions in society, as well as their effects on culture at large. They were considered indispensable agents in the inexorable march of progress, exerting a broad “civilizing influence” and as enterprises of national importance, catalysts and proof of self-ascribed modernity. Also in the dream-like ambivalent imagery of the Exposition, the turn of the century was represented as inherently contradictory and tension-filled, able to promise a scenario of transformation and continuous motion rather than a steady predictable progress.