Full Description
Provides an innovative and theoretically rigorous approach to the subject of testimony in Latin America.
This book rethinks the nature of testimony beyond the ground of the human in works produced in Chile and Argentina from the 1970s to the present. Focusing on literature by Juan Gelman, Sergio Chejfec, and Roberto Bolaño, as well as art by Eugenio Dittborn, Kate Jenckes argues that these works represent life, death, and the relation between self and other "beyond the human," that is beyond the sense that we can know and represent ourselves and others, with powerful implications for our understanding of history, community, and politics. Jenckes engages with the work of Jacques Derrida together with the intellectually rigorous field of Chilean aesthetic theory to explore issues related to the nature of testimony.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Messianicity beyond Militant Messianism: Apostrophe and Survival in Juan Gelman's Poetry
2. Myopic Witnessing and the Intermittent Possibilities of Community in Sergio Chejfec's Los planetas and Boca de lobo
3. Living and Writing in the Deserts of Modernity: Roberto Bolaño and the Alter-immunological Potential of Literature
4. Image and Alterity Beyond the Sepulture of the Human: Eugenio Dittborn's Photocollages
Conclusion
Works Cited & Bibliography
Notes
Index
