The Insubordination of Signs: Political Change, Cultural Transformation, and Poetics of the Crisis

Theorizes the cultural reactions - particularly those within the world of the visual arts, literature, and social science - to the oppression of dictatorship 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. Richard has been central to the dissemination throughout Latin America of work by key contemporary thinkers, including Nestor Garcia Canclini, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Diamela Eltit. Her own writing provides rigorous considerations of Latin American identity, postmodernism, gender, neo-liberalism, 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.