Nelly Richard - Böcker

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 one of the most prominent cultural theorists writing in Latin America today. As a participant in Chile’s neo-avantgarde, Richard worked to expand the possibilities for cultural debate within the constraints imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), and she has continued to offer incisive commentary about the country’s transition to democracy. Well known as the founder and director of the influential Santiago-based journal Revista de crÍtica cultural, Richard has been central to the dissemination throughout Latin America of work by key contemporary thinkers, including NÉstor GarcÍa Canclini, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, and Diamela Eltit. Her own writing provides rigorous considerations of Latin American identity, postmodernism, gender, neoliberalism, and strategies of political and cultural resistance. Richard helped to organize the 1987 International Conference on Latin American Women’s Literature in Santiago, one of the most significant literary events to take place under the Pinochet dictatorship. Published in Chile in 1993, Masculine/Feminine develops some of the key issues brought to the fore during that landmark meeting. Richard theorizes why the feminist movement has been crucial not only to the liberation of women but also to understanding the ways in which power operated under the military regime in Chile. In one of her most widely praised essays, she explores the figure of the transvestite, artistic imagery of which exploded during the Chilean dictatorship. She examines the politics and the aesthetics of this phenomenon, particularly against the background of prostitution and shantytown poverty, and she argues that gay culture works to break down the social demarcations and rigid structures of city life. Masculine/Feminine makes available, for the first time in English, one of Latin America’s most significant works of feminist theory.

Nelly Richard is one of the most prominent cultural theorists writing in Latin America today. As a participant in Chile’s neo-avantgarde, Richard worked to expand the possibilities for cultural debate within the constraints imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), and she has continued to offer incisive commentary about the country’s transition to democracy. Well known as the founder and director of the influential journal Revista de crÍtica cultural, based in Santiago, Richard has been central to the dissemination throughout Latin America of work by key contemporary thinkers, including NÉstor GarcÍa Canclini, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, and Diamela Eltit. Her own writing provides rigorous considerations of Latin American identity, postmodernism, gender, neoliberalism, and strategies of political and cultural resistance.In The Insubordination of Signs Richard theorizes the cultural reactions-particularly within the realms of visual arts, literature, and the social sciences-to the oppression of the Chilean dictatorship. She reflects on the role of memory in the historical shadow of the military regime and on the strategies offered by marginal discourses for critiquing institutional systems of power. She considers the importance of Walter Benjamin for the theoretical self-understanding of the Latin American intellectual left, and she offers revisionary interpretations of the Chilean neo-avantgarde in terms of its relationships with the traditional left and postmodernism. Exploring the gap between Chile’s new left social sciences and its “new scene” aesthetic and critical practices, Richard discusses how, with the return of democracy, the energies that had set in motion the democratizing process seemed to exhaust themselves as cultural debate was attenuated in order to reduce any risk of a return to authoritarianism.

In this important book, one of Latin America’s foremost critical theorists examines the use and abuse of memory in the wake of the social and political trauma of Pinochet’s Chile. Focusing on the period 1990–2015, Nelly Richard denounces the politics and aesthetics of forgetting that have underpinned both the protracted transition out of dictatorship and the denial of justice to its survivors and victims.What are the perils and social costs of a culture of forgetting? What forms do memories of injustice take in newly formed democracies? How might a history of violence and an ethics of reparation be reconciled in post-autocratic societies? In addressing these and other questions, Richard exposes the abuses of the past and the present while also attending to the residues of memory that are manifested in street protests, literature, and the media, and in artistic practices from architecture and urban design to installation and film. While cultural artifacts can be powerful devices for resistance and critique, Richard argues that they can also be complicit in reproducing and collaborating with forms of institutional and political oblivion. Both within Chile and beyond, Richard offers a trenchant critique of how authoritarian regimes and neoliberal states whittle away at memory’s critical capacity. At a time of seismic political realignments in Latin America and internationally, Eruptions of Memory makes a powerful case for the ethical, political, and aesthetic value of memory.

In this important book, one of Latin America’s foremost critical theorists examines the use and abuse of memory in the wake of the social and political trauma of Pinochet’s Chile. Focusing on the period 1990–2015, Nelly Richard denounces the politics and aesthetics of forgetting that have underpinned both the protracted transition out of dictatorship and the denial of justice to its survivors and victims.What are the perils and social costs of a culture of forgetting? What forms do memories of injustice take in newly formed democracies? How might a history of violence and an ethics of reparation be reconciled in post-autocratic societies? In addressing these and other questions, Richard exposes the abuses of the past and the present while also attending to the residues of memory that are manifested in street protests, literature, and the media, and in artistic practices from architecture and urban design to installation and film. While cultural artifacts can be powerful devices for resistance and critique, Richard argues that they can also be complicit in reproducing and collaborating with forms of institutional and political oblivion. Both within Chile and beyond, Richard offers a trenchant critique of how authoritarian regimes and neoliberal states whittle away at memory’s critical capacity. At a time of seismic political realignments in Latin America and internationally, Eruptions of Memory makes a powerful case for the ethical, political, and aesthetic value of memory.