
The Insubordination of Signs
Political Change, Cultural Transformation, and Poetics of the Crisis
Nelly Richard(Author)
Duke University Press
Published on 23. March 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
152 pages
978-0-8223-3339-5 (ISBN)
Description
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 crItica cultural, based in Santiago, Richard has been central to the dissemination throughout Latin America of work by key contemporary thinkers, including NEstor GarcIa 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.
Reviews / Votes
"At last, Nelly Richard's work is available for English-language readers. A leading figure in the theater of Latin American critical debate, Nelly Richard has written with unorthodox brilliance about the Chilean transition to democracy, North-South cultural relations, and the value of aesthetic intervention to rethink the politics of difference."-Francine Masiello, author of The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis "The Chilean publication of this book and of its companion volume (Masculine/Feminine) confirmed and advanced Nelly Richard's reputation as one of the foremost critical voices of the age. Richard's brand of cultural critique, informed by a thorough attention to contemporary forms of subjectivity, is unmatched in the force of its theoretical articulation, its aesthetic sensitivity, and its sharp deployment of political strategies. Nelly Richard is today an essential reference for intellectual work in Latin America and beyond."-Alberto Moreiras, author of The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies "Nelly Richard mobilizes language into a trenchant critique of the political, academic, and market-oriented production of meaning that ushers in quiescent solutions to crises such as that of the postdictatorial reconciliation in Chile. Like the aesthetic projects she endorses, her work gives expression to the 'diffuse zones of the unsaid.' Richard wrestles the materiality of critique so that it maintains the inscriptions of antagonism, making it an indispensable instrument for an effective democratic culture. In The Insubordination of Signs, her words add muscle to the Benjaminian insight into rebellious memories that will not be quashed by 'final and totalizing truths.'"-George YUdice, author of The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global EraMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
202 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8223-3339-5 (9780822333395)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Nelly Richard | Stanley Fish | Fredric Jameson
The Insubordination of Signs
Political Change, Cultural Transformation, and Poetics of the Crisis
E-Book
03/2004
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€178.99
Available for download
Persons
Nelly Richard is a renowned Latin American cultural studies theorist. Born in France and a graduate of the Sorbonne, Richard has lived in Chile since 1970. Among her many books are La estratificaciOn de los mArgenes and PolIticas y estEticas de la memoria.
Alice A. Nelson is a Member of the Faculty at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She is the author of Political Bodies: Gender, History, and the Struggle for Narrative Power in Recent Chilean Literature.
Silvia R. Tandeciarz is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at the College of William and Mary. She is the author of Exorcismos, a book of poetry.
Alice A. Nelson is a Member of the Faculty at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She is the author of Political Bodies: Gender, History, and the Struggle for Narrative Power in Recent Chilean Literature.
Silvia R. Tandeciarz is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at the College of William and Mary. She is the author of Exorcismos, a book of poetry.
Content
Author's Note
ix
Translators' Acknowledgments xi
Note on This Translation xvii
1. Ruptures, Memory, and Discontinuities (Homage to Walter Benjamin) 1
2. A Border Citation: Between Neo- and Post-Avant-Garde 23
3. Destruction, Reconsstruction, and Deconstruction 39
4. The Social Sciences: Front Lines and Points of Retreat 51
5. Staging Democracy and the Politics of Difference 65
6. Conversation: German Bravo, Martin Hopenhayn, Nelly Richard, and Adriana Valdes 77
Notes 103
Bibliography 113
Index 121
ix
Translators' Acknowledgments xi
Note on This Translation xvii
1. Ruptures, Memory, and Discontinuities (Homage to Walter Benjamin) 1
2. A Border Citation: Between Neo- and Post-Avant-Garde 23
3. Destruction, Reconsstruction, and Deconstruction 39
4. The Social Sciences: Front Lines and Points of Retreat 51
5. Staging Democracy and the Politics of Difference 65
6. Conversation: German Bravo, Martin Hopenhayn, Nelly Richard, and Adriana Valdes 77
Notes 103
Bibliography 113
Index 121