A Visual Glossary, Expanded. Delirio güero (White Delusion)

In this chapter, the artist Nina Hoechtl adds three more entries to the visual glossary first published in Sharpening the Haze (Ubiquity Press, 2020). Based on her film DELIRIO GÜERO WHITE DELUSION . 2211, 2018, 1825 and Back (2018), these entries spark a dialogue around delirio güero (White delusion), a concept coined by the author, which engages in a complex practice of entanglement and entitlement, implication and aspiration, innocence and ignorance, denial and delusion. The film chews over various delirio güero acts in Mexico carried out by the monarchs Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium, the explorer-artist Jean-Friedrich Waldeck, the architect, researcher, and photographer Teobert Maler, and Anton “Toni” Mayr — both followers of Maximilian — and a relative of Mayr, the maker of DELIRIO GÜERO and author of this essay. The topics covered in this addition to the glossary include the “politics of location,” which deconstructs the figure of the White savior; the practice of autohistoria-teoría as a way to unlearn privileges and challenge the internal and external güero; and a hauntological (auto)biography that focuses on a seemingly innocent statement in order to contemplate an approach to inheritance and heritage (personal, biological, cultural, visual, or epistemological).