Precarious Resistance: Weaving Opposition in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicua Author(s): Juliet Lynd Reviewed work(s): Source: PMLA,

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PMLA

Precarious

Resistance: Weaving in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna

Opposition

JULIET LYND

Quipu Quipu

que

no recuerda

nada.

that remembers

nothing. ?Cecilia Vicuna

THE

CECILIA POETANDARTIST VICUNA WASA PIONEERINEXPER

imental art in Chile

regime of Augusto Pinochet (1973-90). By the mid-sixties was altering landscapes, disrupting cityscapes, and mining cariousness

a decade before happenings and other artistic displays emerged in themid-seventies genre-bending as a deliberately cryptic form of resistance to the violent military Vicuna

the pre of language to produce new forms of socially engaged art. The abstract designs she traced on the beach at Con-con in 1966 River meets the Pacific Ocean (where the Aconcagua [fig. 1]), for instance, were earthworks avant la lettre,but their evocation of an

indigenous aesthetic combined with the impermanence of the piece (themarks were washed away by the tide, and only photographs re main) made palpable the loss of a disappeared civilization.1 The im perative of incorporating indigenous notions of art, nature, and the
sacred into a nonmimetic, neovanguard artistic practice became a

core tenet of the Tribu No

'No Tribe,' which Vicuna would

later found

JULIET LYND is visiting assistant profes sor of Spanish at Saint Olaf College. She has published articles on Latin American film and cultural studies and is at work on a book about aesthetics, politics, and performance in postdictatorship Chile.

with her friends. This group of poets and artists pledged deference toward the indigenous (hence the creation of a "tribe") and opposi tion to anything perceived as dominant (i.e., capitalist, bourgeois,

criollo) culture.2 Full of youthful idealism but not immune to ideo to everything vaguely logical contradictions, theNo Tribe's challenge
The images on pages lia Vicuna. 1589, 1595, 1597, and 1599-1603 are reproduced by permission of Ceci

I588

2005

BY THE MODERN

LANGUAGE

ASSOCIATION

OF AMERICA

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12 o. 5

Juliet Lynd

1589

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1590

Precarious

Resistance:

Weaving

Opposition

in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna

PMLA

Unidad

Popular project. At the very least, it is in line with the "tradition of rupture" simply Octavio Paz associates with a long-standing questioning ofmodernity that can be traced

dominant might seem incompatible with their support of Salvador Allende's unquestioning

book

visual poems whose meaning derives from the play of thewords with their image on the page. Yet the collection as a whole does more than present the trajectory of the artist's work; the
re-presentation tures, poems, of her precarious and performances texts?sculp whose transi

includes examples of her early poetry and performances with the Tribu No, photo graphs of her installations and street art, and

through European poets such as Friedrich Arthur Rimbaud, and Andre Holderlin, Breton (Bianchi, Memoria But Vicuna's 247). earliest art interventions also posit a compati bility between leftistpolitics and postmodern

tory nature is designed to reflect the fragility of life and its historical circumstances?re members and rearticulates the Utopian impe therefore quipOem not only revisits the past, it also rethinks the revolutionary ideals of bygone eras in terms tus of her earlier works. relevant to the contemporary challenges of a democratic society still plagued by the persis

to Chile?she has continued to experiment in and between various genres and to find new ways to incorporate references to indigenous aesthetics into her social critiques. In her poetry, performance, sculpture, film, instal lation art, theater, painting, essays, and hap

art. And although the ist, deconstructionist Tribu fell apart after the coup?Vicuna found herself caught in London and unable to return

penings, she draws sharp parallels between the constructed nature of formal categories of creative production and those that determine social hierarchies. References to Chile never

and poetry refer to the rich visual symbolism of the fiber arts that continue to be an integral part of contemporary indigenous traditions

tence of rigid social hierarchies, and itposits the poem as a vehicle for doing so. Throughout the collection, Vicuna's art

dinate
enous

entirely disappear from her work in exile, and the Chilean situation will become ametaphor for the global dynamics of power that subor the south to the north and the indig
in the Americas. Her to the criollo art

in theAndean world and throughout much of theAmericas. Far from a mere celebration of

ways inwhich global cultural memory is con structed and a politics of hope is forged.3 in 1997 as a ret published quipOem, rospective of the artist-poet's work for an English-speaking audience,4 combines poems, photographs, and documentation, both visual

and poetry invite a rethinking of those con nections in terms of an interrogation of the

communities. The writing of poetry finds parallels in the semiotics ofweaving, a textile textual practice that alludes to the unspo ken, unwritten stories of women and of the indigenous. Feminist scholars have likened form of textuality, to weaving, a devalued language, interpreting it as a blank page that the untold story of women.6 Weav thus ing effectively references the strength ofmaterial cultural practices resistant to the contains
forces of modernization, even while connot

the beauty of indigenous aesthetics, her refer ences toweaving evoke the subordinated yet persistent cultural practices of Amerindian

Chile and through ship and democracy?in out the Americas. Vicuna's work reflects the idealism of the rise of socialism Allende years in Chile, chet's military during the the violence of Pino

and narrative, of her aesthetic responses to a thirty-year history of struggle with dictator

regime, the pain of exile, and the reconceptualization of struggles for social justice after the return to democracy.5 The

the poet's creative use of ref the Americas, erences to the quipu points to the multiple cultural erasures suffered throughout the continent. The neologism of the title?qui

ing the silencing ofAmerindian voices. Ifweaving alludes to the persistent pres ence of other forms of cultural production in

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a fusion of poetry with the poem?suggests lost art of the quipu, a pre-Hispanic form of abstract encoding involving elaborate systems of knots on colored strings.7Although quipus still have a ritual function in some Andean communities,8 the use of them for recording statistical as well as narrative information has been lost to the processes of colonization. It is true that after the conquest quipus continued to be used for recording some accounting in

Peru). On the one hand, her work taps into the cultural memory of the indigenous through

ment of independence) to northern Maine? although itcan hardly be stated that quipOem presents for its audience any direct explana tion of the plight of the indigenous or of con temporary Amerindian political and cultural movements, in Chile

out theAmericas, from southern Chile (where the Mapuche were not "pacified" until the late nineteenth century, well after the establish

formation in the Spanish colonial bureaucracy, and indeed Spaniards were fascinated with the cord-based
not survive as

system, yet quipu making

a means of representation.

did
As

Walter Mignolo explains, quipus, along with other nonalphabetic forms of "writing," such asMesoamerican

hieroglyphs, were devalued in favor of by sixteenth-century Europeans alphabetic text,which quickly established its authority in the New World. Contemporary scholars have made significant advances to

the illustrious tradition of poets such as Pablo Neruda or Ernesto Cardenal, whose cantos write the silenced voices of the indigenous into In her personal the history of the Americas. and professional lives, Vicuna has lived with and worked for indigenous communities in South America, and she is actively involved in the promotion ofMapuche literature not only inChile but in the United States as well.10 Yet

or anywhere else. On the other hand, Vicuna's poetry, while clearly builds on identifying with themarginalized,

mation, and recentlyGary Urton provocatively explored the idea that quipus were produced using a binary code similar to that of comput ers. Debates flourish as towhether quipus were

ward the decoding of the quipu: numbers can be read on quipus containing statistical infor

mnemonic

devices that served only their mak ers or sophisticated systems of representation shared by a community of "readers." What is

communities represented. The appropriation of indigenous aesthetics in her work, however, makes the indigenous voice a palpable ab sence; the semiotics of the poetic text posits the ambiguous presence ofAmerindian imag

her use ofweaving and references to the quipu in her poetry are remarkably removed from the sociopolitical realities of themarginalized

to know the precolonial past and the aporia of memory in the postcolonial world.9 It is striking that in a collection directed toward an English-speaking North American audience Vicuna refers primarily to Andean cultural

of life, and as a constitutive element of Vicu na's poetry, they represent at once the desire

indigenous world. As part of the contemporary social imaginary, then, quipus connote an irrecoverably lostway

certain is that the quipu presents amystery for theWestern imagination and a cultural loss for the subordinated

more, the concept of precariousness,

her work is grounded, reveals

ery as traces of a subordinated reality and as evidence of the possibility of imagining social relations in an entirely differentway. Further inwhich
a self-conscious

ness of the fleeting nature of identification with radically other cultures, both past and contemporary, and establishes the represen tation of otherness as a materialization?in

forms and specifically to the Inca with itsmystery-shrouded empire, quipus and ceqe, the sight lines radiating out from the capital, Cuzco (located in contemporary

desire to tap into a different imagining and constructing of society. Given dience,

art, in poetry, and especially in the interpre tive locus of the in-between space posited in this visually provocative collection?of the

au North American quipOetns it is notable that Vicuna chooses to

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Resistance:

Weaving

Opposition

in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna

PMLA

not theMa reference the Inca empire?and yan or Aztec civilizations?to represent alter native social realities. As Jeffrey Quilter points out in his preface to a collection of articles on

contemporary quipu studies, the Inca culture has not had the same appeal forNorth Ameri can and European scholars as theMesoameri the exotic hieroglyphs buried in the Central American jungles have more spurred Western romantic can cultures. Whereas

reproduction of texts produced in a particular historical moment invites a double reading: repositions works quipOem in of the socialist revolu support produced tion or in opposition tomilitary rule to the other. The context of redemocratization mony of a neoliberal north and south, dominant and marginal ized. The book thereby reveals a changing and the hege globalism that divides

strategies that refuse to promote a facile and illusory identification with themarginalized

sensibilities, the tactile, nonpictographic quipus are less

have too long been caught up in debates as to whether the Inka Empire was the ideal social
ist state or the worst example of fascism ..."

(xiv-xv). Quilter obviously representational also points out that "[s]cholars of the Inka

conception of the political potential of art in the cultural logic of late capitalism.12 Vicuna's use of form to explore the challenges inherent in any attempt to represent otherness without an opposi speaking for the other suggests tional politics that relies on a poststructural

na's work conjures up all these connotations. Yet her precarious aesthetics avoids imposing any one interpretation on the past (or on con temporary indigenous cultures as alternative

(xv), yet another way inwhich the precolonial past is the recipient of postcolonial projec tions hardly devoid of ideological bias. Vicu

istunderstanding of language and a refusal of metanarratives her poli (such as Marxism); tics invites contemplation of the articulations between hierarchizing logics of otherness on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, and gender. In her texts, the privileging of deconstruction and the negotiation ofmeaning work to cre ate an alternative logic by which poetry and

Utopian alternative to the social hierarchies constructed throughout the Americas as a re sult of colonialism as well as of dictatorship

communities); instead, itutilizes the exoticism of indigenous aesthetics to trigger the imagi nation and invite the possibility of forging a

vehicle for attaining an open-ended mode of that denies fixed meanings representation and privileges creative connections, position ing the ephemeral as a gesture of hope against

and contemporary neoliberal globalization.11 The precarious aesthetic is forVicuna the

way of imagining interrelations among hu man beings and across lines of otherness. the deployment of difference in Whereas Vicuna's early work constituted a disruptive force to challenge the hegemony of classist, racist, and sexist discourses and so change the

performance can break down the illusions of coherence provided by seamless narratives. The aesthetic thereby becomes an alternative

hegemonic discourses of power. In quipOem, however, the re-presentation of the trajectory of her work through Chile's recent history of dictatorship and democracy plexity of her interpolation aesthetics reveals the com of indigenous into her precarious poetics. From her earliest interventions on the streets of has utilized the concept of to rethink ways of recording precariousness the memory of violent, traumatic (re-cording) Santiago, Vicuna collective histories through representational

world, her stake in the revolutionary poten tial of the aesthetic is ultimately replaced by a revised notion of the transformative power of art. The precariously constructed texts in cluded in her Sabor a mi (1973), written as al tenure but legories of hope during Allende's

published as one of the earliest cries of protest in the immediate aftermath of the coup, are rendered allegories of defeat by the changed historical circumstances. Ten years later,
many Precario/Precarious recontextualizes

of the earlier works and resuscitates them as

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an alter allegories of hope and memories of native consciousness?largely based in indig enous systems of belief and constructed as a

critique of the dictatorship. However, in the postdictatorship terrain of a debilitated left?

this forgotten system of representation, Vicu na's quipu is indiscernible from any other: the objects remain, but the system ofwhich they once formed an integral part has disappeared. The reinvented quipu does not so much sug gest a desire to recuperate that lost code as

of a postutopian world of late capitalism in deconstructive power of repre general?the senting alterity becomes not a way to imagine a differentworld but rather a differentway to imagine theworld. one finds On the first page of quip0em, (the reproduction of) a thin handwritten

it signals the emptiness of the traces of the forgotten and unknowable. Vicuna's quipu is an exact repetition of form that is conceptu ally entirely different; it can be read but never like the original. Unlike Gilles Deleuze's af

terrupted after a couple of inches by a typed phrase, "the quipu that remembers nothing, an empty cord," and then the pen's etching continues, making a few small squiggles?as if itwere a string. As it marks itsway across the otherwise blank white page, the deviations

line that starts out moving straight across the page, just below the center. The line is in

Vicuna's

firmation of the liberating potential of such recognition, there is a strain of nostalgia in early poem. The later reworking of
poem, however, seems to the verse as a visual

shed this backward-looking gaze at history and embrace a different conceptualization of the quipu: it is a relic that cannot remember the past but that in the present indicates a dif ferentway of representing memory. in 1997 as a visual poem, Reproduced

from the line spell out "is the core." The last letter hits the edge of the page, and the next page picks the line up. It barely progresses a centimeter before it is again interrupted by typescript writing: "the heart of memory."

however, the verse is inscribed in an ink rep resentation of a cord; the artist-poet is no longer content to juxtapose the poem with the piece. Even the inscription on the page evokes the etymological relation between

beach. Below

The line starts up again and dead-ends at the fold in the center of the book, where begins a photograph of abstract designs traced on a the photograph are the words "the earth, listening to us" and the caption "Con-con, Chile, 1966" (fig. I).13 This four
visual poem represents the same fusion

page

of weaving

and writing, Incan and European of systems representation, that can be dis cerned in the title quipOem. "Quipu que no recuerda nada" 'Quipu
that remembers poems, nothing' written was one of Vicuna's one to accompany

writing now has the authority that the quipu once had in the structuring ofmemory, but the alphabetic text lacks the visual, tactile,

language and string, text and textile, specifi cally between written representation and the threads of memory. The piece affirms that

presence and absence: by signaling the lack of memory, it enacts memory, but thememory
is the trace of an absence, the consciousness

and spatial dimensions of older forms of en coding memory, of representing the past. The poem plays on the paradoxical simultaneity of

earliest

a replica of a quipu. Her quipu might have looked like an Incan quipu, but as her poem reminds its reader, it can be no more than an

of her first precarious sculptures. Taking a string and tying knots in it, the artist created

of something irrecoverably disappeared. The 1997 visual version works to fuse thewritten a re images in a reinvention?not lost the Andean cuperation?of way of think ing, imagining, and representing theworld. Mignolo provides a thorough historical examination of the consequences for theNew of the privileging of the alphabetic text textwith

aesthetic object, torn from itsno longer exis tent functional context. The irony of the piece is that for the viewer with no knowledge of

World

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Resistance:

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Opposition

in the Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna

PMLA

raphy?were devalued, subsumed under the ultimate authority of thewritten word. Angel Rama traces the consequences of this power inscribed in thewritten text, explaining how literacy has determined access to power, how to maps)

during the Renaissance. Other systems ofma terial, visual representation?from quipus to to forms of hieroglyphics cartog indigenous

mentation

for an example of one of the early precarios [q.41]) would seem on some level to contra

tered after the 1973 coup. Indeed, the docu of the "precarious" texts (see fig. 2

dict the spirit of the works themselves, for if the novelty of the precarious is derived from the foregrounding of its impermanence, then the photograph counteracts that by making it a permanent object of aesthetic contempla tion. Certainly works like Sabor a mi appear to cling to thememory of art once executed in a different time and place, as if to recap ture themoment and mourn the loss not so

written documents deeds

masculine

of language that are difficult manipulations to interpret and constitute a cultural prac tice not frequently engaged in popular sec tors, but, more basically, literature excludes in "the quipu the illiterate. Nevertheless,

work against an entrenched system of power. Such accusations may be particularly appro priate when a literary text indulges in opaque

over the feminine.14 Literary insti tutions are not exempt from this relation, as accusations of elitism can always be leveled that literature can by critics unconvinced

(from laws to property have imposed one order on another: European over indigenous and the

much of thework of art as of its conditions of possibility. At themoment of the photograph, the precarious work represents an offering of revolutionary hope, but whereas the photo graphs in Sabor a mi protest against erasure, in Precario they document those works that exist(ed) outside the text and invite con

templation of their temporality. As Roland Barthes has stated, "The Photograph does

of asserting the transformative potential of the literary text, despite and because of its that alphabetic writing opacity?maintains can indeed reconstruct cultural memory in ways that function as an antidote both in content and to official memory, in form. In

that remembers nothing," Vicuna?follow ing, of course, a long and weighty tradition

not call up the past (nothing Proustian in a photograph). The effect itproduces upon me (by time, by distance) but to attest thatwhat I see has indeed existed" (82). The photograph is never an exact repetition of the original refer ent; rather, the photograph elicits the strange experience of the "anterior future" (96), the sensation that what is shown in the picture exists in the present along with the knowl edge of or thewondering about what will have is not to restore what has been abolished

the poet experiments with visual quipOem, in poetry conjunction with photographs, of Chile and of her art, to infuse writing with the dynamism of visuality.

at Con-con.15 The quipu or in the book's line ends string penned crease, precisely where the photograph from Con-con begins. Vicuna used the photograph 1966 earthwork

This first poem of the collection not only reworks an earlier poem, it also literally col lides with the memory of another piece, the

happened and the certainty that the referent no longer exists, that in the present of the pic ture it is going to die. So the photograph, if in the light of Barthes's analysis of the incommensurable experience of seeing it instead of its referent, is in a sense as precari ous as the doomed object. considered as well, the picture of the quipOem artwork evokes the long-gone, precarious threefold sensation ofwhat certainly existed, In

before to recall her disappeared precarios: Sa bor a mi and Precario/Precarious position the
images as memory traces of an art practice shat revolutionary intentions were

what no longer exists, and what is seen now as a replica after the original work of art has ceased to exist. But in this first text presented

whose

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poem, physically connected to verbal images of the simulta

neous presence and absence of

in the book, the photograph is visually integrated into the

memory. The verse "the heart of memory" is linked by the line/ string to the verbal image of the quipu that remembers nothing and the photographic docu mentation of designs traced on a beach thirty-one years before the publication of the book. The

poem. The contrast established in the first two verses, between a lack ofmemory and the heart

the photograph, thus placing the image in the center of the

last line of the poem, "the earth, listening to us," comes below

of it, suggests thatmemory is in fact constructed on what can not be articulated, on what is forgotten, on what once existed be faithfully re because itno longer
as memory. This

but cannot membered

exists?except

visual poem, then, foregrounds the theoretical underpinnings of the construction that consciousness with

ofmemory and reminds the reader/viewer ent is a constant renegotiation the oblivion of the past. remnants of a pre colonial history testify to a vio of the pres

The visual

Weft
against

of incense
maximum

sticks: maximum
power.

fragility

lent past that has been erased but not forgotten. The poem does not look to an essentialized

indigenous culture to oppose postcolonial power; rather, it invites the reader to imagine other loci of to reimagine the interconnect edness between self and other, between hu enunciation,

ment

of hers from New York, 1989, which returns to the issues of writing, history, and memory by alluding to the nondocumenta tion of precarious works:
The first precarious they existed

Fig.2
London, 1973. Photograph by Nicholas Battye.

man beings and the earth "listening to us." In the documents section at the end of quipOem, Vicuna includes a written state

works only

were

not

docu

mented,

for the memories

of a few citizens.

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History, did not

as a fabric of inclusion embrace them.

and

exclusion,

(The history of the north excludes thatof the south, and the history of the south excludes
itself, tions.) In the void and between the two, the precarious their (q.135) embracing only the north's reflec

planations of happenings and performances carried out with the Tribu No and a presen tation of the "diary of objects" that appeared for theUnidad

cated towork created before or during 1973, including photographs and brief narrative ex

its non-documentation as another reality.

established

non-place

defeat in the aftermath of the coup. The re contextualization of these works, nearly three decades after their initial production, again transforms what was initially a direct inter

in Sabor a mi as one-time gestures of support Popular, rendered allegories of

work and the permanence (or permanent pre cariousness) of the documentation, locating in rela the importance of the photographs

The poet thus gives another reading of the tension between the precariousness of the

vention

the integration of Chile and the rest of Latin into a United States-dominated America

tion to the very writing of the history, specifi cally the history of neocolonial relations and

Tribu No Allende

The texts that once were chaotically pre sented as a "howl of pain"17 in Sabor a mi now reappear in conjunction with theworks of the thatwere carried out "in support of the revolution" but whose distance from the

into historical commentary on the limitations of the socialist project for think ing through the challenges of difference.

global system. The poem suggests that to doc ument the works is to rethink what history includes and excludes and to expose the pat

tern of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the

historical text. The process is bound up in the dynamic of power between North and South America,

greening the rooftops and squares into for ests and gardens, cities and fields into edens. Allende laughed and said pensively: 'maybe

project is now patently clear. Vicuna recounts, for example, that she "proposed a day of the seed to Salvador Allende: seedbeds

between the so-called global north and global south.16 The precarious works de are associated with what signed to disappear the south excludes from its own history as it embraces foreign models. The documenta tion of the works, then, incorporates those silenced voices, at leastmetaphorically, into a

(q.28). A few by the year two thousand'" she later, pages reports having passed along to the former socialist president, "through
a common friend," her "proposal to create

reinscribing of the history of the south. This reflection on memory initiated in the first pages is predicated on a specific reference to the artist's earlier conceptual introduces the autobiographical art and thus element of

ideas and said: 'Chile isn't ready.'" Vicuna's transformation and radical de mocracy are here presented not as a critique of cultural of Allende,

a Bank of Ideas, to collect and carry out the best ideas in the country. Allende laughed

precisely, but as a memory of the distance between the radical dimension of her thinking?the possibility ofwhich she readily attributes to the "Chile of that time"?and the

Vicuna's

tions are interspersed, as noted above, with poems. As we follow this re-presentation of Vicuna's history as an artist, it is striking to note that the first third of the book is dedi

her conceptual works, the evidence ofwhich exists only in photographs and personal ac counts. These images and narrative explana

follows the trajectory of the book. quipOem artistic career, focusing primarily on

more pragmatic but also more limited vision of theUnidad Popular project (q.33). on the bank Adjacent to her comments two black-and of ideas, Vicuna has included white photographs of the "Chile of that time": on the top half of the page is an image of a

a sprawling shantytown; below is picture of to the street, presumably thousands flocking

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a rally of support for theUnidad Popular. The suggestion is clear: themultitudes in the street in the second picture are the invisible inhab itants of the shacks piled up between the city and the mountains in the first (there are no

human figures in the top photo graph). The image ratifies the existence of this history, and itdoes so, according to Barthes, more than any other form: "No writing can discernible

young boys entertain themselves with a game of cat's cradle. On the right, an armed soldier crouches down in front of a man behind wire fence; the apparently imprisoned man is reaching under the wire barricade and to

tographs without commentary, both ofwhich are simply identified as "Chile, 1973" (q.46-47; fig. 3).18On the left,people are lined up along a dirt road bordered by small, impoverished houses with tin roofs; in the foreground, two

give me this certainty [of the existence of the referent in a photograph]. It is themisfortune (but also perhaps the voluptuous pleasure) of language not to be able to authenticate itself"

ward the guard, who seems about to hand him something. Others behind the fence also ap pear to search for something on the ground. The ambiguity in both photographs is strik ing. The left-hand image studiously shows

history by presenting pictures with no cap tion, no explanation other than by juxtaposi tion with other texts. The shantytown could at any time be anywhere (with mountains) in history since massive

(86-87). Vicuna pushes the limits even of this affirmation of the photograph's relation to

poverty and highlights a desolate landscape, but we do not know what people are waiting in line for, or even if it is before or after the fateful September 11 of 1973,when a dramatic coup d'etat brought Pinochet to power. Fur

the urbanization; in street in the that could be any place throngs has broad avenues and nineteenth-century architecture (no signs or posters are vis ible; no landmarks locate the demonstration temporally or geographically). The viewer is the photographs, from the aesthetic projects the obstinate

thermore, the boys playing with the string are the focus of the image: caught up in the pattern of the string intertwined around their fingers (which echoes the motif of weaving throughout the book),19 the boys are oblivious to their surroundings, although the adults in

forced to deduce,

of another era; the sug as remains that Chile's struggles well gestion with poverty and protest are not unique. Following the book's exposition of Vicu na's 1973 objects of resistance, the reader turns the page to find a two-page spread of two pho

surrounding reminder of a Chile

the background look at them?or is it at the camera? Either way, a tension is created be tween the self-absorption of the boys and the endless line of poverty behind them. On the opposite page, the apparently candid shot of the guard and theman reaching out from be balanced.

hind the fence is compositionally

Fig.3
Chile, 1973.

. ... ......

~~ ~ ~ ~~

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manized

The guard's rifle points directly at the man, but it seems temporarily forgotten. Despite the possible momentary lapse of the dehu

connection between guard and pris oner, the disproportionate relation of power is inevitable, and itdominates the scene. The photographs, positioned side by side, suggest one long image (each has the same

tions ofNew York City street scenes, many of which revolve around an ecological discourse that calls attention to the easy flow of trash in the urban environment. So the photographs of Chile are juxtaposed to an art practice that is carried out throughout theAmericas and is vance is underscored by the constant naming of places, from the beaches of southern Chile to those of northern Maine, passing through Santiago, Bogota, and New York and nearly relevant in these multiple contexts. That rele

top and bottom margins of white space, and each stretches from the edge of the page to the

stances (through a distracting game, through momentary cooperation between prisoner

right. Both photographs evoke the harsh re alities of "Chile, 1973," and any redemptive human ability to overcome miserable circum

ing the ambiguity of their referents. At first glance, the people standing in line on the left seem to join themen behind the fence on the

edge blends with the shades of gray on the left edge of the other image. A continuity between the two images is thus suggested, compound

crease of the book). The photograph on the left is cropped in such a way that the pattern of the clothing of the person cut off on the right

than a personal basis of her reference, an autobiographical work. The interconnectedness of the images understood

always referencing the remote cultures of the Andes. The poet-artist's reminders of the vio lent events of Chile's recent history must be as much more

in the book suggests that the photographs of Chile ground the work as a whole, standing and throughout the Americas art has consistently opposed. The unresolved memories of the dictatorship that operate that Vicuna's as metaphors for the historical shifts in power

art and poetry, these an active viewer to demand both photographs exposition
renarrate

and guard) is subsumed by the violence of the scenes. When placed in the midst of an of Vicuna's

thus not only remind the reader of the exiled realities of the artist, they also constitute a political framework inwhich to read the rest of the pieces and from which
The overarching concern

reverberate the
with

larger dynamics of power in theAmericas.

mining

the memories

ents and a contextualization of the artist-poet's work around the ambiguity of this historical

exposed

by

the

refer

other cultural ways otherness poem defines

retelling the history of dictatorship. of Chile are by no These photographs means the dominant images in quipOem.
By far, most are of Vicuna's art?some pieces

absence of any reference to a third historical period (e.g., of transition to democracy) em phasizes the importance of remembering and

grounding. "Chile, 1973" contains the last pictures in the book that document anything other than Vicuna's work. The conspicuous

systems of representation for to reenvision the subject's relation to in the is thoroughly articulated The author "Ceq'e" (q.110). succinctly

the indigenous concept of the ceqe section of for the reader in the documents

the book: "Ceqe: Line (Quechua). The Inca's and ritual calendar. The ceqe astronomical were a virtual quipu of sight lines radiating out from Cuzco, invisible lines whose 'knots'
were the waka, sacred sites, stones and tem

produced

ages of her sculptures (figs. 4-5 [q.81, q.76]), her public weavings (fig. 6 [q.114-15]),20 her
museum installations, and her transforma

inChile and many others elsewhere throughout the Americas. This includes im

ples used as markers for astronomical obser vation" (q.138). Below the title is an epigraph

survivor and poet of the by the Holocaust Jewish diaspora Paul Celan: "Thread Suns / 'there are still songs to be sung on the other side /of mankind.'" As Vicuna has done in

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>1m;W^^

"^"

-'

York, 1990 Pueblo de Altars, ExitArt,Ne\v

fllfllll

v$lk$ mimm?, adkmpm, pueblos jmenm* jm^Jas, ^n^am^J^^^^/Kj^^^&SW" /' i& alfcires all are pwtffcJos ; v V.3jjjM

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i6oo

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other works, resemanticize

she draws on another author to

Fig.5
TheMummy's Skirt, 1987. Photograph by Cesar Paternosto.

verse). Below the epigraph is the first verse, written conventionally across the page: "The

the images she uses (here, light and thread, but also the desire to imagine impossible perspectives fromwhich to create

ceq'e is not a line, it is an instant, a gaze." This line (which ends with a comma) at once stands alone on the page and introduces the is displayed visually as nine lines radiating out from a central void of white space (fig. 7). The image itself sug gests ceqe lines or the form of a quipu or possibly a sun (in ref erence to the Celan rest of the poem, which

verse), although the rays or threads do not reach around to form a complete circle; they leave a gap at the top. Ceqe and quipus

created by the layout of the poem. The title evokes the Incan sight lines emerging from Cuzco, and the word quipu in the first/last lines of the visual poem suggests theAn dean representational strings. (Additionally, the glossary confirms

are the primary ref erents for the image

con the conceptual nection between the

The page isfilled with

lines and circles, creat ing a tension between

ceqe and the quipu.)

the linearity imposed by the alphabetic text and the multidirec tionality the visual image invites. In ac with

''/j^?^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ET^y>'v->j"''?y-&**>"^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^S^^M||^^MHBj^^^jW|pB^^^y^,,i "".:,-,',"

cordance

the

first verse ("The ceq'e is not a line, it is an

instant, a

line must be thought of as an instant, as the

gaze"),

each

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II' I

(.rtdt. %SBtl vfoodol ('hl, 19<i4

momentary

instantiation of a gaze. On the op an posite page, uncaptioned color photograph of a person's hand tangled up with red, orange, and yellow strings (a thread sun?) creates lines

The last three verses (or the first three, ifone reads the quipu from right to left?and there is no reason not to, since the visual poem sheds its entrenchment in reading conventions as read, starting at the top:

Fig.6
The Corral Grid, San Fernando, Chile, 1994. Photograph by Cesar Paternosto.

that radiate outward but that also crisscross, as the sunlight casts dark shadow lines that

much as possible)

follows (or would read this way if they were not placed in a pattern on the page): A mental quipu
to measure a an thought, earthly and mediate radiating sun

in any determination of a 8 given pattern (fig. [q.lll]). The verses arranged like a quipu read as role of perspective

are insubstantial yet as visible as the threads in the photograph?thereby emphasizing the

a quipu that is not

times ritual measure

or frombelow The verses "seen from above" below" and "or from

other by type in opposite directions. Conven tional reading practices, bent to conform to the shape of the poem on the page, come up against their limit here: since there is no one poems

in ei flow together grammatically ther order inwhich they are read, a signifi cant point because they are set off from each

another seen

meridian

from above

way to read the poem, multiple created, all ofwhich are valid.

are

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Fig.7

Ceq'e
Thread
"there

Suns
are

still songs to be sung on the other side of mankind" ? Paul Ceian

The ceq'e

is not a line, it is an instant, a gaze,

to Measure

anJ and

me<fiate

is not a quipu that

|r

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Fig.8
Photograph by Cesar Paternosto.

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is not." The nonexistent quipu is a mental ex ercise; itspurpose is "tomeasure and mediate /a thought" but from multiple perspectives. The poem, thanks to itsmultidirectionality,

This simultaneity seems to be the central idea of the "mental quipu" or the "quipu that

proposed as a dynamic and open process, always at themercy of renegotiation. This is Vicuna's aesthetic solution for her erally?is nation's troubled and troubling memories of dictatorship and its unresolved relation to its brutally produced diaspora. Her work places the aesthetic at the service of reexamining the Americas' history of repression, destruction, and marginalization, re-membering hierar

at once suggests that "another meridian" is a metaphor for themental quipu, that either themeridian /or from below or the quipu is "seen from above / time's ritual measure" or

"that a quipu that is not / time's ritual mea sure /or from below" is also "seen from above The thought circulates horizon, perhaps "on the other side /ofmankind." The poem therefore around another / another meridian."

chical power relations across the marks of otherness and difference, and negotiating a global cultural memory with which to forge
a more democratic world.

proposes an endless adjusting of perspective, a reevaluation of the gaze. The metaphor of the ceqe (or of the quipu) grounds the notion of imagining other ways of thinking in his torical reality: the quipu and the ceqe, today devoid ofmemory, once existed as part of an

Notes
Soledad Bianchi states, of Vicuna's early sculptures "It is almost certain inscriptions on the landscape, that these were the first samplings of conceptual and land art in Chile" ("Pasaron" 92; my trans.). 2 of the Tribu No is based on com My description ments by Vicuna's fellow No artist Claudio Bertoni, and quoted La memoria (150). A rather lengthy to is the infrequently dis of this book devoted chapter cussed Tribu No, but Bianchi explains the formation of in Bianchi's 1

entirely other system, not on the other side of mankind but indeed on the other side of

history, a side that came before inscription in the alphabetic texts of official memory written by the victors?by those who American

have had the luxury to forget.21 course of the following the quipOem, in from her Chile artist-poet youth through her revolutionary art for the socialist cause, through her art in protest of the dictatorship, and through

its entirety). Bianchi notes that the group was formed by three couples, all around twenty years old (Vicuna was came from different and that the members nineteen), branches of the university: art, architecture, engineer ing, English, theater, and philosophy. Their common in a

the group more succinctly in her article "Pasaron desde . ..," (a aquel ayer study that, incidentally, constitutes the first academic attempt to analyze Vicuna's work in

of her meta the broadening an in is thus exile, autobiogra phors forged career (to 1997), but it also phy of Vicuna's her work as rethinks and recontextualizes in rethinking visual modes of representing memory. The poet's knowledge mined for new ofNative American cultures is metaphors, while references to the indigenous simultaneously decry the injustice of the cul an experiment

stance and countercultural generalized to (neo)vanguard and public art, ranged to van Gogh and surrealism, from jazz and soul music sto to theMayan from Andre Breton's surrealist Nadja terests, besides a commitment ries recorded in the Chilam Cine Balam to the Nueva Narra then shaking up Latin American the group was marginal aesthetics and politics. Although of the time, to other, better-known cultural organizations tiva and the Nuevo the Tribu No, Bianchi points such as Trilce or Aruspice, era and out, is no less representative of the tumultuous the idealism of its youth, and she observes that Vicuna's

tural forgetting of a violent history and call tomemory that destruction. The reinscrip tion of memory?Vicuna's personal history as told through the trajectory of her career as well as the collective history in quipOem of Chile specifically and of theAmericas gen

texts (poetic and otherwise) were among the most inno vative of the time. 3 here in the dy I use the term "cultural memory" about the past and namic sense of a body of knowledge the present that is in constant renegotiation. added here to stress the circulation of Vicuna's "Global" discourses

is

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and the relevance throughout Europe and the Americas they take on in those contexts, especially where there and colonization is a shared history of extermination of the indigenous. There is also a sense of how cultural memory engages such issues as the human and environ mental for the expansion of global capi the imperative of actively tal. Nelly Richard describes in South America: "The exercise of exercising memory serves to denounce fabricated the maneuvers, memory that erase and indifference, daily by passive forgetfulness serves as well to reanimate traces. Exercising memory trade-offs made

elude Vicuna, clearly the themes ofmemory and mourn ing are prevalent in her work. 6 Susan Gubar's "The Blank Page." See particularly The practice of weaving?by silenced women such as Greek mythology also has conjured up Penelope?in Western feminist uses of the trope (see Klindienst); yet as Maria Damon points out, these literary appropriations of are still distant from the material labor of poor weaving women engaged in the needle arts, from to Appalachia to Vicuna Third World the etymo sweatshops. appeals logical origins of textuality in the textile arts practiced a time before by women throughout the globe and since the origins of writing. Nevertheless, her work does evoke the contemporary plight of weavers who are silenced by the cultural legacies of colonialism. ' (as well as English) spelling of Quipu is the Hispanic the Quechua word for "knot" or "to knot." In the scholar

remains of a past full of bro the apparently vanquished ken symbols, ideological fractures, Utopian remnants of a historicity that, nevertheless, can still be reimagined of this through the desire to shake off the monotony present, which has been routinized by a technocracy of take the? experts. Some of these exercises of memory of public denunciation combative?form by the relatives of the disappeared and who persist in their obstinate unconditional search for justice. Others take up the his torical disaster to contrast the expressive fragility of its traces with

ship written in English, khipu is frequently used. Quipo is another common spelling of theword. Vicuna uses quipu throughout her text. 8 See Frank Salomon's tions to the collection and Carol Mackey's of contemporary quipu and Gary Urton. contribu studies ed

made

the instability of the technological landscape of hard, immaterial screens. At the same time, crit

ical thought reelaborates new conceptual images on the basis of the accidental materials of a history whose vul nerability unlimited seems flow of the nothing like the optimistic that global capital circulation of merchandise ism puts on parade" (11;my trans.). Richard's comments refer specifically to the importance of remembering mili

ited by Jeffrey Quilter 9 Another unique use of the quipu found in Francoise

in literature can be

de Graffigny's Letters from a Peruvian Woman (1747). In this epistolary novel, the protagonist, a fictional Inca princess captured by Spaniards and given over to the French, her letters, which ences for her would-be in recording her experi Inca groom. The reader is given are supposed to be quipus; the author, takes solace

of a global social order. 4 is only half the book. Flipping itvertically, quipOem one finds The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna (de Zegher), a collection of academic essays and an interview with Vicuna. The articles and the interview all situate the artist-poet between vanguard movements of Europe and the Americas and Andean traditions. 5 of Colonial unites much the continent in history a shared collective but it should also be experience, noted that the coupling of authoritarian regimes with integration into the global economy through neoliberal

tary violence and challenging the silencing forgetfulness of the transition. Vicuna posits that violence as tragically and traumatically symptomatic of the founding violence

de drawing especially on the works of the Inca Garcilaso a direct la Vega, presupposes between equivalency quipus and writing. Whether or not it is realistic to imagine qui pus serving as personal love letters, note how the author uses the Peruvian woman's perspective to present a critical

Academic ployed

view of French society, duly reported in the letters/quipus. is thus em knowledge of the Inca worldview to criticize theWest and to suggest that other cul the Inca?have been able to construct tures?specifically, a more just society. This contrast between the Western and is nowhere to be found inVicuna's work, thrives on the ambiguity produced by presenting the reader with the possibility inherent in different ways the non-Western

which

has been perpetuated by demo policy?which the history cratically elected governments as well?marks of much of the Americas. See Idelbar Avelar's discussion of the problem of memory in the wake of the shift from the authority of the state to that of the market imposed violence. His throughout South America by dictatorial work on that of sociologists critics studying redemocratization builds that this transition to neoliberalism and other cultural to suggest not only has been more con

economic

of imagining the world. In Vicuna's work, the Inca empire is not held up as a model; rather, it is evidence thatWest ern structures of power are not inevitable. 10 See her introduction to the bilingual edition ofMa puche poetry she edited, Ul: Four Mapuche In Chile, indigenous groups were Pinochet's Poets. victimized by economic policies regime, whose neoliberal favored the claims of big business over indigenous lands, and Amerindian political organizations united with other

sequential than the so-called transition to democracy but also that much postdictatorship cultural production on the left can be read as an expression of mourning of the defeat of leftist politics. Although his study does not in

forces. The post-Pinochet prodemocracy governments, however, have done little to advance indigenous rights. 12 The phrase "cultural is logic of late capitalism" to invoke the work of Fredric intended Jameson on

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(see esp. his Postmodernism, postmodernism "Cognitive and Cultural Turn). A careful analysis of how Mapping," Vicuna's formal experiments engage questions of social and oppositional marginalization politics reveals a dif ferent take on the function of the aesthetic in relation to the apparently cognitively unmappable relations of power corpo brought about by the expansion of transnational rations, the exponential proliferation of finance capital, and an increasing cultural investment in the logic of the market to regulate the distribution of wealth in society. 13 are marked Pages q.8-11. The pages of quipOem with a lowercase q; the articles collected in The Precarious, side of the book, are paginated normally. over leaves the privileging of the masculine the feminine unexplored, but the questions he raises about who had access to the writing invites reflection on how women's voices too were silenced by these processes. 15 de Zegher points out the fundamental Catherine the opposite 14 Rama difference between Vicuna's work at Con-con and the officially designated ent time and place: art of Nancy Holt or Richard earth works earth art that emerged in a differ "Read in comparison with the land

to the Barthesian onymity contributes reading uncanniness. 19 De Zegher suggests that the work of the pologist Franz Boas on string figures as an old an added entertainment worldwide provides

of their anthro form of

layer of to the meanings evoked by Vicuna's meta complexity 18). phoric use of threads ("Ouvrage" 20 are two of her more recent Particularly striking (1994) outdoor works, Hilo en el cerro (in which she criss

crossed Santiago's Cerro Santa Lucia public park with red yarn spun by aMapuche woman) and 12 hilos en un corral (inwhich she transformed the space of a corral on a farm near San Fernando). in the mountains See de Zegher's analysis of these two pieces, which "reframe Vicuna's concern with crossing the boundaries that separate the individual and the collective, the private and the public, the local and the global, the 'smooth' and the 'striated,' the 'nomad space' and the 'sedentary space'" ("Ouvrage" the corral piece to the devastating ef 29-30). Relating

Vicuna's Long, Cecilia to the differ not only in their relationship environment and the body, but also in their diffusion of

fects on local farmers of the transnational expansion of agribusiness, de Zegher suggests that Vicuna's "weaving 'protects' the entering viewer/reader and the land against the multinational corporate grip of North American agro-industry?which corn to replace it with eliminates its own the 'inferior' farmers become native com 'rich' corn treated so as not

to Vicuna's In contradistinction perception, knowledge. for the viewer to these artists have staged a landscape in order to aggrandize the self and to summon awe for the sublime Other, as a reason for obliterating it.... Again, in the case of Vicuna, the earth work is not colonize about appearance, but about disappearance" 21). De Zegher goes on to mention Vicuna's of Con-con on her 1981 return to Chile of exile and relates the connotation Paternosto ("Ouvrage" revisiting

to run to seed, so that the Chilean

pletely dependent on those corporations for production." She goes on to state, "Moreover, taking up the grid's am bivalent relation tomatter and to spirit, Vicuna extends it in her work Andean 21 to imply the overlaying ofmodernity culture, and vice versa" (31). The Stone and the Thread onto

that of the disappeared bodies points out a similarity (of aesthetic, not size) 1966 spirals in and Vicuna's between the lines of Nazca the sand at Con-con, and he notes as well that she was of the Nazca hieroglyphs 17). Paternosto's point is to signal an innate, intuitive connection with indigenous cultures in her work, but regardless of this mystical continuity, her inscription of human presence on the land through ab of the existence ("Cecilia Vicuna" stract forms recalls pre-Hispanic cultural production. 16 to understand the metonymous It is also possible north and south in reference to the criollo "pacification" Indians of southern Chile in the nine of the Araucanian after the struggle for indepen teenth century, decades dence was won. Yet the book's production and circulation in English in the United States suggest that the reference is primarily toward the larger dynamic of globalization and neocolonialism. 17 introduc is from Felipe Ehrenberg's The quotation tion to Sabor a mi. The pages are not numbered. 18 Neither these photographs nor the aforementioned in images of the shantytown and the throngs of people the street are listed in the photography credits; their an then unaware

after eight years to of disappearance of the dictatorship. Cesar

See Paternosto's

for a re

thinking of the history of abstract art that writes out the bias against indigenous aesthetics as primitive. Analyzing in the pre the various genres of abstract art developed Hispanic Andean world, Paternosto shifts the paradigms that have dominated explanations ofmodernist primitiv ism to expose the fallacy of the modernists' "discovery" of premodern forms. Parting from the premise that pre art was both abstract and inherently not dec Colombian that it constituted a visual code integrated orative?i.e., into a worldview?he cultural an array of indigenous analyzes to Ay forms, from Incan stone monuments

mara weaving, to disrupt and rearticulate the metanar of aesthetic forms rative of the progressive development Paternosto's art history. Vicuna shares with revisiting of indigenous aesthetic traditions art a revalorization of na and their relation tomodern established by modern tive cultures that counters modernity but does so without or exoticizing the other relegating its forms to the realm of the premodern. Whether or not Vicuna's personal rela tionship with Paternosto is relevant (they have been part ners for years), she has stated that her work has evolved in tandem with his since 1980 (Wik'una 109). Likewise, in his work (Stone 165). he cites her poetic etymologies See the twin essays in which Vicuna writes on his work

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of the parallels and he on hers for further contemplation in their representation of indigenous aesthetics (Vicuna, "Cesar Paternosto"; Paternosto, "Cecilia Vicuna").

Keefe-Ugalde,

Sharon.

"Hilos y palabras:

Disenos Pat Mora

de una y Ceci Is Ours."

ginotradicion lia Vicuna)." Klindienst,

(Rosario Castellanos, Inti 51 (2000): 53-67. "The Voice

Patricia.

of the Shuttle 1 (1984): 25-53.

Stanford Literature Review

Works Cited
Avelar, Idelbar. Latin American Durham: Barthes, Roland. The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Fiction and the Task ofMourning. Duke UP, 1999. Camera Lucida: on

the Common Thread." de Ze Lucy. "Spinning 7-15. gher, Precarious Mackey, Carol. "The Continuing Khipu Traditions: Prin ciples and Practices." Quilter and Urton 320-47. Lippard, Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Ann Arbor: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. U ofMichigan P, 1995. Cesar. "Cecilia Vicuna." 16-17. Texas UP, Roots ofAbstract 1996. Trans. Lori M. Carl son. Review -. Art. Trans. Quilter, Quilter, 39 (1988):

Reflections Photog raphy. 1980. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill, 1981. Soledad. "Pasaron desde Vicuna aquel ayer ya tantos y la Tribu No." Hispa

Paternosto,

Bianchi, merica -.

anos, o acerca de Cecilia La memoria: Modelo del decada tiago: Direccion 1995. Damon, Maria.

rIheStone and the Ihread: Andean Esther Allen. Austin:

17.51 (1988): 87-94. para armar: Grupos literarios San de los sesenta en Chile: Entrevistas. de Bibliotecas, Archivos yMuseos,

Preface. Quilter and Urton xiii-xix. Jeffrey. and Gary Urton, eds. Narrative Threads: Jeffrey, inAndean Khipu. Austin: Nortes, 1984.

Accounting and Recounting U of Texas P, 2002. Rama, Angel. Richard, La ciudad

Improvising 37-41. Deleuze, Gilles.

Embroidery': Theorizing, "'Independent Chain 4 (1997): Text/ile Collaborations."

letrada. Hanover: Politicas Santiago:

Nelly. la memoria.

"Presentacion." Ed. Richard.

1968. Trans. Repetition and Difference. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. as

y esteticas y de Cuarto Propio,

2000.9-12. Salomon, Frank. "Patrimonial Khipu in a Modern Peru vian Vilage: An Introduction to the 'Quipocamayos' of Huarochiri." Urton 293-319. and Quilter Tupicocha,

a Not, Notes de Zegher, M. Catherine. "Ouvrage: Knot Knots." de Zegher, Precarious 17-45. -, ed. The Precarious: Vicuna. Ehrenberg, Hanover: Felipe. UP

The Art and Poetry of Cecilia of New England, 1997. Introduction. Vicuna, Sabor. n. pag.

Urton, Gary. Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Records. Austin: U of Knotted-String Texas Vicuna, -. -. -. -, P, 2003. Cecilia. "Cesar Paternosto." 39 (1988): 1983. 14-15. Trans. Anne Twitty. New Trans. Lori M. Carl

a Peruvian Woman. Graffigny, Franchise de. Letters from 1993. Trans. David New York: MLA, Kornacker. Trans, of Lettres d'une Peruvienne. Gubar, Susan. 1747. "The Blank Page." Writing and Sexual Dif Ed. Elizabeth Abel. Sussex: Harvester, 1980.

son. Review York: Tanam,

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ference. 73-93.

The Jameson Jameson, Fredric. "Cognitive Mapping." Reader. Ed. Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks. Maiden: Blackwell, -. -. modern, 2000. 277-87. Turn: Selected Writings on the Post 1983-1998. London: Verso, 1998. or, The Cultural Duke UP, 1991. Logic of Late Cap The Cultural

Trans. Esther Allen. Hanover: UP of quipoem. New England, 1997. Sabor a mi. Bilingual ed. Introd. and trans. Felipe Ehrenberg. London: Beau Geste, 1973. ed. VI, Four Mapuche Poets: A Bilingual Anthol ogy. Introd. Vicuna. Trans. John Bierhorst. Poetry in Indigenous Languages. Pittsburgh: Latin Amer. Lit. Review, 1998. La wik'una. Santiago: Zegers, 1990.

Postmodernism; italism. Durham:

-.

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