Cultural Residues

Chile in Transition

2004
Author:

Nelly Richard
Translated by Theodore Quester and Alan West-Durán
Foreword by Jean Franco

Reveals the cultural substrata of the transition from Chilean dictatorship

A portrait of postdictatorial Chile by one of that country’s most incisive cultural critics, Cultural Residues uses memoirs, photographs, art, and novels—the “residues” of a culture—to analyze the political-cultural Chilean landscape in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s seventeen-year military rule.

According to Nelly Richard, such residual areas reveal the flaws in Chile’s transition from violent dictatorship to electoral democracy.

A complex portrait of postdictatorial Chile by one of that country’s most incisive cultural critics, this book uses memoirs, photographs, the plastic arts, novels, and other texts—the “residues” of a culture—to analyze the political-cultural Chilean landscape in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s seventeen-year military rule. Such residual areas reveal the flaws and lapses in Chile’s transition from violent military dictatorship to electoral democracy.

Nelly Richard's analysis ranges from an exploration of false memories of the recent past—especially memories of violence—to a discussion of the university under neoliberalism; from debates about the use of the word “gender” to an examination of refractory texts and cultural activities such as Diamela Eltit’s “testimonio” of a schizophrenic vagabond, Eugenio Dittborn’s use of photography in art installations, and transvestite performances. In Cultural Residues, each instance becomes a suggestive metaphor for understanding a rapidly modernizing Chile attempting to re-democratize its public life.

Nelly Richard is Chair of the Program in Cultural Studies at the Universidad Arcis in Santiago, Chile, and a founding editor of Revista de Crítica Cultural. Richard has published several works of criticism, including La insubordinación de los signos and Masculino/Femenino.


Alan West-Durán is assistant professor of modern languages, Northeastern University, editor-in-chief of the two-volume Latino and Latina Writers, and the translator of works by Alejo Carpentier and Cristina García, among others.

Theodore Quester is a professional translator based in Texas.

Contents

Foreword jean franco
Acknowledgments

Introduction

i. policies and politics of memory, techniques of forgetting

1 Cites/Sites of Violence: Convulsions of Sense and Official Routines
2 Torments and Obscenities

ii. the popular and the urban: scenic fragments

3 Neobaroque Debris: Scabs and Decorations
4 The Congealment of the Pose and Urban Velocities
5 Dismantlings of Identity, Perversions of Codes

iii. academic borders and hybrid knowledges

6 The Academic Citation and Its Others
7 Antidiscipline, Transdiscipline, and the Redisciplining of Knowledge

iv. polemics and transvestisms

8 The Graphic Model of an Advertising Identity
9 Turbulence, Anachronism, and Degenerations
10 Gender, Values, and Difference(s)

v. points of flight and lines of escape

11 Take the Sky by Assault: Political Transgression and Flight of Metaphors
12 For Love of Art: Critical Ruptures and Flights of Fancy

Notes
Select Bibliography