Dismantling the Nation
Dismantling the Nation, the first academic volume to theorise and historicise contemporary artistic practices and culture from Chile in the English language, takes as its point of departure a radical criticism against the nation-state of Chile and its colonial, capitalist, heteronormative, and extractivist rule, proposing otherwise forms of inhabiting, creating, and relating in more fluid, contingent, ecocritical, feminist, and caring worlds. From the case of Chile, the book expands the scholarly discussion around decolonial methodologies, attending to artistic practices and discourses from distinct and distant locations. Analysing how these practices refer to issues such as the environmental and cultural impact of extractivism, as well as memory, trauma, collectivity, and resistance towards neoliberal totality, the volume envisions art history and visual culture from a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective.
Catherine Spencer has contributed a chapter about the work of artist Juan Downey, ‘Video Trans Americas: The Networked Body and Bordered Violence’.