"Woman" and Chile: in Transition
"Transitions to civilian rule in Latin America today," according to Veronica Schild, "involve a reconfiguration of state-civil society relations along the lines of the neoliberal modernizing project, with powerful cultural effects" (94). One such effect is el tema mujer, as the Chilean critic Raquel Olea calls the indiscriminate or all-encompassing topic of "woman" in cultural productions, which she says is a result of recent historical, social, political and economic conditions (i.e. transitions to civilian rule, neoliberalism) that contribute to an ever-increasing problematization of female identity, often causing official reactionary discourses to it. The historical moment of the late twentieth century points to a time of redefinition of identity and roles in most aspects of Chilean society (not just female identity) as Chile went from being socialist democratic, to ruled by military dictatorship, and back to democracy again. It is within the larger spectrum of these societal changes that the redefinition, and consequently the representation, of female identity becomes so critical.1 Representation is so important because, as Nelly Richard asserts, "el modo en que cada sujeto se vive y se piensa esta medido por el sistema de representation del lenguaje que articula los procesos de subjetividad a traves de formas culturales y de relaciones sociales" ("Feminismo" 734). For Richard, it is necessary to contextualize these tensions in the
Testimony, Ethics, and the Aesthetic in Diamela Eltit
Two works by the Chilean writer Diamela Eltit, El Padre Mío (1989) and El infarto del alma (1994; produced in collaboration with Paz Errázuriz), contain an undeniable testimonial impulse that aligns them with testimonio, a genre of subaltern personal narrative that has emerged with new force in Latin America in recent decades. Yet these texts, which present subjects who are mentally ill, incoherent, or lacking identities, call into question some of the key assumptions about testimonial practice and its reception, disrupting the usual responses of identification with and empathy for the narrator. By reading and writing testimonial discourse through a postmodern aesthetic, Eltit advocates the recognition of testimonial subjects as producers and agents of culture rather than as victims in need of compassion. Her project, with its particular merging of the aesthetic and the ethical, constitutes a local yet politically urgent attempt at rethinking the predominant conceptualizations of marginal culture, refusing the notion that the aesthetic is the exclusive privilege of elite culture.
Phase characterisation of simulated high burn-up UO2 fuel
Abstract To determine the lattice constant variation with burn-up and the oxidation behaviour at high temperatures, simulated UO2-spent fuels with burn-ups up to 200 GWd tM−1 were prepared by cold pressing and sintering and characterised by X-ray diffraction analysis and thermogravimetry. The fcc-lattice parameter of the sintered samples determined at room temperature, showed a continuous decrease with the simulated burn-up. During oxidation the conversion of the simulated fuels to the (U,FP)4O9 and (U,FP)3O8-type phases was strongly delayed when the simulated burn-up exceeded 80 GWd tM−1. Also, at high burn-ups (>100 GWd tM−1), large fractions of the (U,FP)4O9-type phase remained untransformed to (U,FP)3O8 after prolonged exposure to air at 950–1000°C. This suggests a marked widening of the (U,FP)4O9-phase field when the amount of substituted uranium atoms exceeds values of about 8%.