"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
Temne Twins (T-bri) Should Share Everything: Do You Mean Everything?
Frederick John Lamp This is a story of miniature spirit houses, elfin wooden beings, the empty shells of the dead, and the fear of sexual transgression, especially incest compounded by homosexuality. It takes place among the Temne people of northern Sierra Leone, situated in the incidence of twin births and the response of families to this rather disconcerting phenomenon. Multiple sets of twins, sometimes two and three sets in a family, are not uncommon in this region, as I have observed in several different places and had been confirmed at the beginning of the twentieth century (Thomas 1970 1:18). However, I have found twin ritual and its effects only in the western part of Temneland, especially in Port Loko District.1 Miniature houses are found here and there in Temne villages and larger towns and one does not always know at a glance what each one might be. Some may be chicken coops or other small sheds for animals, although this is rare. Most miniature houses are small because they represent the dim, remote world of the spirits, less visible than the houses of the real world, obviously not useful to real people, not located in real dimensions or space or time (see Lamp 1982, chapter 3). Among these spiritual, miniature houses are the houses devoted to twins.2 These are not where wooden twin figures are housed, but they contain symbols of twinship and of death, and they are the site of sacrifices. It is the use of the twin houses, more than the twin figures, that dominates twin ritual. In this article I would like to introduce the readers to a form of art unfamiliar to most scholars of African art in an area not well covered in the literature. We will look at the ritual surrounding twin births and deaths, and play with some thoughts about twinship in general, and why it causes parents such concern. Twins (tà-bàri, sg. kà-bàri) definitely give rise to elaborate precautions. We begin with the figures, which may interest traditional art historians the most, but which are surrounded by even more arresting visual and performative imagery.
Postmodernism, Postleftism, Neo-Avant-Gardism: The Case of Chile's Revista de Critica Cultural
In my opinion, the nucleus of the postmodernist problematic in Latin America is not in the game of understanding the taxonomies of postmodernism but rather in the attempt to redefine the actual links between aesthetics and politics in an age of catastrophic social changes. It is for this reason that I propose here the study of one of these attempts, that of the Revista de Critica Cultural, a publication initiated in May 1990 in Santiago, Chile, and published three times a year under the editorship of Nelly Richard. The Revista de Critica Cultural assembles personalities of varied trajectory in the artistic and cultural avant-garde that arose in Chile between 1973 and 1990. The journal also recruits works from Latin American and U.S. or European intellectuals identified with postmodernist or poststructuralist positions. The paradox involved in this study is that it is being undertaken by someone who disbelieves in postmodernist arguments: even more, from the perspective of my own historical materialism, I suspect that to discuss the profile of the forms of subjectivity generated within the unequal and combined development of dependent societies under the label of "postmodern sensibility" is a theoretical diversion, an ideological trap, and a waste of