Writing, Plot, and Desire

DIAMELA ELTIT Translated by Ramsey McGlazer

In this talk, I want to go very freely back over some cul­tural as­pects of my lit­er­ary ex­pe­ri­ence. This might seem like a ju­ve­nile thing to say. But I don’t know how else to express­ it. I have ded­i­cated a fun­da­men­tal part of my life to lit­er­a­ture. First as a pre­co­cious read­er, then later as a lit­er­ary reader attached, I remem­ ­ber, to the act of read­ing in a com­plex ad­o­les­cence, when it of­ered lib­er­a­tion and flight from the ev­ery­day. And then, in what was clearly a path laid out, a route al­ready writ­ten for me, uni­versity­ stud­ies in lit­er­a­ture, why not, un­der­taken at two Chilean uni­ver­si­ ties: The Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile for un­der­grad­u­ate study and the Universidad de Chile for grad­u­ate school. Writing was on my ho­ri­zon. It was there as a de­sire and dis­com­fort. Because my ex­ces­sive read­ings, my fas­ci­nat­ing uni­ver­sity stud­ies and their ap­proach to Latin Amer­i­can lit­er­ary his­to­ry, had of course wrought havoc and im­posed lim­its on the task of writ­ing that were too rig­or­ous. A space had opened up where knowl­ edge had be­come in­im­i­cal. It is pos­si­ble, or it is cer­tain, that I made the lit­er­ary into a space that was per­haps to­tally tran­scen­dent. But, in the end, it was what I had. Or, as the Chilean writer Marta Brunet would say, lit­er­a­ture was “mine, mine.” A de­sire had stuck to me, em­a­nat­ing from within a prac­tice of read­ing that was, as I have said, in­ces­sant. I re­mem­ber that I thought, when I was ten or eleven years old, af­er read­ing Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, the first novel in my his­to­ry, that I wanted to be a writ­er. At that same time, I read the books Heart and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These were dra­mat­ic, heart­rend­ing read­ings. I read these books sub­merged in too much sen­ti­men­tal­ism, which to­day seems un­nec­es­sary to me. By con­trast, Hemingway’s novel en­tered me in an­other way, as a source of as­ton­ish­ment, as a discov­ ­ery in the most lit­eral sense of the word. From that point for­ward, I com­mit­ted to a path that was per­haps too rig­id. Possibly.

CRITICAL TIMES | 3:1 | APRIL 2020 DOI 10.1215/26410478-8189889 | © Diamela Eltit This is an open ac­cess ar­ti­cle dis­trib­uted un­der the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 148

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 This desire to be a writer grad­u­ally be­came more com­plex. In a cer­tain way more in­ac­ces­si­ble. Although I was writ­ing, I wasn’t writ­ing what I was writ­ing. I wrote alone, and in my sol­i­tary ef­orts I re­wrote what oth­ers had writ­ten. I knew it and suf­ered. Until I un­der­stood that my greatest lim­i­ta­tion in­volved the writ­ing, not the ar­gu­ment or sto­ry, but the writ­ing itself. The cen­tral prob­lem wasn’t what to write but how to write. In that spe­cific mo­ment, I think I discov­ ­ered what has since seemed to me to be the spi­nal cord or life­blood of the lit­er­ary sys­tem. Of course, what I am claiming is not a gen­er­al­iz­able norm, not at all­. I am re­fer­ ring in­stead to a kind of subjectivation, an agreement,­ a personal­ place in which to shield one­self. Reading had al­ready been de­cided on as my main ac­tiv­i­ty. I could eas­ily es­tab­lish a se­ries of read­ings. I was ­able to dis­cern how cer­tain texts had the power to shape force­ful pol­i­tics, aes­thet­ics, and po­et­ics. I grad­u­ally de­cided on the read­ings, from a di­verse lit­er­ary range, that cap­ti­vated me. My ad­mi­ra­tion was placed in those works that, in one way or an­oth­er, turned to un­ex­pected strat­e­ gies of writ­ing, moved signs. Their im­ages were dif­ use but pow­er­ful. In short, they established new pol­i­tics of read­ing. I am not re­fer­ring to “orig­i­nal­i­ty” in the sim­ plest sense of that word, but rather to a re­think­ing of po­et­ics, as in the novel Pedro Páramo. Of course, Juan Rulfo has re­la­tions to many oth­ers. This is be­cause, from my perspec­ ­tive, lit­er­a­ture, in one of its senses, can be un­der­stood as a geo­log­i­cal field marked by mul­ti­ple re­la­tions. Or it is a rhizomatic sur­face that is pulled, cov­ ers over oth­ers, is un­cov­ered, ad­vances. I think that by read­ing a bit of “ev­ery­thing” I was able­ to de­cide on cer­tain av­e­ nues that be­came ap­pren­tice­ships or self-ap­pren­tice­ships. One way or an­oth­er, the realm of lit­er­a­ture had narrowed, which im­plied a re­duc­tion. I was sure that my task depended on the full­ness of the writ­ing, that this was the chal­lenge. The bat­tle with writ­ing took over what would be my first nov­el. The mil­i­tary coup and its in­cal­cu­la­ble and un­fore­seen ef­ ects forced mil­li­ons of us to re­or­ga­nize our lives from top to bot­tom and to change our ways of mov­ing through pub­lic spaces. It is still dif­ficult for me to talk about those very om­i­nous years. I have al­ways been afraid that talking about the dic­ta­tor­ship would re­duce it, flat­ten it, and even sofen it. Mentioning it in a gen­eral way could change it into a set of empty phrases, into a series­ of com­mon­places, into a sim­ple remark.­ It turns out to be very com­pli­cated to talk about that time, which was shot through with rules that came to per­me­ate ev­ery­thing, that took root ev­ery­where, mo­ti­vated by fear. In fact, I have never re­cov­ered from the trauma caused by what I lived through dur­ing those years. I am re­fer­ring es­pe­cially to their im­pact on vic­tims, the malice of the hard­ships of those years, their wounds, the cru­elty of their deaths. Women raped by an­i­mals, our un­der­stand­ing that the worst in­hu­man­ity was fully in­cor­ po­rated into the heart and mar­row of the sys­tem, that the cru­elty was within the coun­try. It is still harrowing for me to see an old photo of a disappeared de­tain­ee.

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 But this was the con­text, the ter­ri­to­ry, the ev­ery­day life, the dis­place­ment, the pow­er­less­ness, the set of primor­ ­dial con­nec­tions with my friends from that time, the lone­li­ness, that I felt. And the ter­ri­to­rial en­clo­sure. I know that I could have lef, and I also know that I could not have lef Chile. I know that those of us who stayed, stayed, and I know how we stayed. It was pre­cisely in this at­mo­sphere that I be­gan to write my first nov­el.1 Its set­ting: a pla­za. In a pre­vi­ous year, I had be­gun a story that took place in a pla­za. A man went to die there. I returned to my place in the pla­za. This time, in this new at­tempt at writ­ing, there was a woman there. At night. I envisioned the night. I saw it, in fact, be­cause the im­po­si­tion of the cur­few forced us to return home, to shut ourselves­ into our houses,­ at first starting at 6:00 p.m., then at 8:00, then later at 9:00, then at 11:00. Later, at 2:00 in the morn­ing. The cur­few lasted from 1973 to 1987. Fourteen years in all­. During the hours of the cur­few, fam­ily gath­er­ings with more than ten peo­ple in a home were for­bid­den. I pause over this as­pect of the pe­riod be­cause I remem­ ­ber how an im­age of­ered me an im­age. It pro­vided a sup­port, cer­tain­ty. It put a text in my eye. This im­age gave me the pre­cise set­ting for the novel and gave it part of its mean­ing. I was returning home and passed by a pla­za. It seemed strange, ex­treme, al­most ex­trav­a­gant. The plaza was empty be­cause the cur­few was approaching (be­ing out­ side was ex­tremely dan­ger­ous, it meant re­ally run­ning the risk of death), and pass­ ing by this space I no­ticed, per­haps for the first time, the power of its il­lu­mi­na­tion in a semideserted city that would soon cease to ex­ist for its cit­i­zens, be­cause it was night­time in the city un­der dic­ta­tor­ship. This was their city; it belonged to them, to the mil­i­tary. That il­lu­mi­nat­ed, per­fect, empty plaza seemed to me to be a stage, a site for rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I imag­ined that later ac­tors would ap­pear in the plaza to be­gin per­ forming in a sin­gu­lar play. This was the pow­er­ful im­age that made me return to my place in the pla­za. And write about that noc­tur­nal space. It took me around seven years. Insecure writ­ing some sec­tions, ex­ul­tant writ­ing oth­ers, I ad­vanced lit­tle by lit­tle, be­cause it turned out to be so dif­ficult for me. I was writ­ing a novel un­der dic­ta­tor­ship. I knew per­fectly well that in those years there was an of­ ce of cen­sor­ship. Every book had to pass through this of­ ce and ob­tain per­mis­sion to be published. We didn’t know who the cen­sor was, or who the cen­sors were, but the of­ ce was in the Ministry of the Interior, one of the most dan­ger­ous in­sti­tu­tions be­cause of the spies who worked for the se­cu­rity agen­cy— be­cause in Chile, as Pinochet said, not even a leaf moved with­out his know­ing it. It was pos­si­ble not to pres­ent books to the of­ ce of cen­sor­ship, but if these books did not have the doc­u­men­ta­tion prov­ing that they were published and cir­cu­ lated with per­mis­sion, they could not be in the few book­stores there were at that time. I was go­ing to be published by the press as­so­ci­ated with a mag­a­zine that

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 an­a­lyzed that pres­ent. The mag­a­zine, APSI, which was of­en cen­sored, also pub­ lished books in the so­cial sci­ences. That year, in 1983, it was expanding and be­gin­ ning to pub­lish lit­er­a­ture. My novel would be its first, and it had to go to book­ stores. It was a chal­lenge. I have to repeat­ (I’ve said it be­fore) that I wrote with a cen­sor by my side, a cen­sor I knew was there, but I never wrote for the cen­sor. My con­cern, and what kept me up at night, was the writ­ing. Until to­day, un­til this very min­ute. My novel was ap­proved by the cen­sors. In my pa­pers held at Princeton Uni­ versity, there is an of­ficial let­ter signed by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior, allowing for the book’s cir­cu­la­tion. It seems in­cred­i­ble, I know, that a Vice Minister would sign an of­ficial let­ter allowing a novel to be published. From the time when I published my first novel un­til to­day, I have been think­ing about lit­er­ary writ­ing, its force, its pan­ic. How to turn lan­guage into writ­ing and writ­ing into an im­age and an im­age into a site for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mean­ings. Because, in one of its senses, writ­ing re­fers to a work along non­lin­ear paths, a work that takes place within a space that is ap­par­ently flat, a search on this pla­teau for the thick­ness and the mul­ti­ple sur­faces that it can gen­er­ate. It turns out to be dif­ fi­cult to en­ter into the ap­pear­ance of a let­ter marked by its use, and make it slide to­ward a less pre­dict­able ter­ri­to­ry. To work on it, think about it, get it wrong, do it again. I am talking about the spe­cific word that arises in the text or from the text to take charge of its suc­cess or its fail­ure. Afer all­, it seems un­be­liev­able that the writ­ ing of a word could stop time, to the point of projecting a broad, three-dimen­sional screen in the cen­ter of our ce­re­bral ac­tiv­i­ty. To leave a word in or de­lete it. Many times, it is a mat­ter of just one word. Or of a break that of­ers a sign, or of the ab­sence of a break to pro­mote a sense of speed and ex­cess. From my per­spec­tive, the first task in­volves the let­ter, the search for a writ­ing that will operate in a way that is at once man­ual and tech­no­log­i­cal, re­leas­ing the let­ter from com­mon­places, untethering it from the of­ficial ap­pa­ra­tus of writ­ing sanc­tioned by pedagogies of the let­ter. What I want to high­light is that, over and above any sto­ry, I have thought of the let­ter itself as a plot, a sur­face or tex­ture. A kind of ma­te­rial mesh thanks to which the tra­peze act of writ­ing al­lows for the risky free­dom of con­tor­tion, or a net­ting that light­ens your fall. A let­ter that complies with gram­mar or that al­ters it when the text dic­tates. A writ­ing that falls back on popu­ ­lar speech and its ac­cents. I have al­ways thought that those pop­u­ lar forms per­ceived as in­cor­rect—tenís (for tienes), haiga (for haya), vaigamos (for vayamos)—are cre­a­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty, cul­tural ex­pres­sion. I think that ev­ery one of these words is a car­rier of beauty and com­mu­nal plen­i­tude. I also think that these words live in us, those of us who have a more sys­tem­atic ed­u­ca­tion. That these ex­pres­sions are lodged in the part of us that re­sides be­hind our lex­i­con, be­cause we un­der­stand these words per­fectly, and in this sense they be­long to us as well.

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 I know that my view might sug­ est a ma­nia, a con­stant set­tling of scores with writ­ing. I also un­der­stand with a cer­tain, rel­a­tive clar­ity that this is a mat­ter of sub­ tle vig­i­lance and that it could go un­no­ticed in a text that is al­ready com­plet­e. But it is here that, in what is by now my now long prac­tice of writ­ing, much of my lit­er­ary en­ergy has been con­cen­trat­ed. It is also here, in this zone, that a breach is opened be­tween the de­sire to write and the writ­ing itself: a hi­a­tus, a void in which we see a fail­ure founded in im­pos­si­bil­i­ty. But it is this ­posim ­si­bil­ity that sus­tains the de­sire that im­pels us to try again. This gap seems to gen­er­ate an eter­nal pres­ent that is al­ways un­pre­dict­able, an­other time that is in­tro­duced by the ma­te­ri­al­i­za­tion of the let­ter and that al­lows for at­ten­tion to de­tail, to the cen­tral­ity of the min­is­cule, its sta­tus as an ar­tic­u­la­ tion of the whole. A hole held open or held up in an ex­panse of time be­come space. It would be easy to think here of a kind of met­al­work, but I’m not sure, be­cause en­ter­ing the let­ter implies en­ter­ing the his­tory of the let­ter and its mean­ings; it is an en­coun­ter that seeks to remove the let­ter from its stu­por and bring it into con­ tact with, or rub it up against, realms that are overlooked by dom­i­nant log­ics. It is an im­pulse that wants to lead the let­ter to a mo­ment of full per­fec­tion. Without this per­fec­tion’s hav­ing bor­ders or def­i­ni­tions. It is an ab­strac­tion, a sort of in­de­ ter­mi­nate, transnutritional hun­ger. A form of per­se­cu­tion that is blank, cir­cu­lar. Perhaps dra­mat­ic. Because in this gap be­tween the de­sire for the let­ter and the let­ter in its ma­te­ri­al­i­ty, time passes and slips away in a sur­pris­ing and nec­es­sary way. Perfection, I know, will not ar­rive. It is a ho­ri­zon, an open sign in the dis­tance. The limit.­ I have never stopped think­ing about writ­ing, its rhythms, its pause, its fa­tigue. I am sure I never will. Just as I have thought of the body as an am­big­u­ous, elu­sive, in­tan­gi­ble zone, I think of writ­ing as a body that, in the madness­ of its dis­per­sion, falls to pieces and is made of pieces. Of traces, in­un­da­tions, ir­reg­u­lar and im­per­ fect edges. In a phrase. I have spent so many years writ­ing that I know how elu­sive writ­ing is. Meanwhile, I think of what I imag­ine could or could not be a book. This is a mat­ter of im­pulse, of some­thing prob­a­ble and im­prob­a­ble that comes over me. Or rath­er, a de­sire for a book that cir­cu­lates in me with­out yet be­ing writ­ing. I think of a book about en­coun­ters. That way of wan­der­ing in or ar­riv­ing some place and en­coun­ter­ing pre­cisely what you were looking for. A pre­ci­sion that is per­haps ac­ti­ vated by that un­con­scious that Freud thought about so much. Lately I have dwelt on this, on en­coun­ters that turn out to be cru­cial. I mean that there are surely en­coun­ters that went un­no­ticed and that could have changed the course of your life or of your writ­ing, which is al­most the same thing. It is pos­si­ble that these un­no­ticed en­coun­ters did not be­come part of any­thing but implanted a cer­tain nos­tal­gia, lef in their wake. And I have also thought about en­coun­ters that be­came

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 missed en­coun­ters. But the most reso­ ­nant thing for me is the un­ex­pect­ed, the kind of un­ex­pected thing that subdues you and sets in mo­tion a mul­ti­plic­ity of thoughts. Astonishment. I have already­ said that the plaza presented itself to me at night. I en­coun­ tered the plaza and the night and the dic­ta­to­rial city. I did not know that night that the novel would be called Lumpérica or that it would take me seven years to write it. In the same way, in 1983, while I was wan­der­ing through the city to­gether with Lotty Rosenfeld, we found “My Father” in a deserted place.2 It was so in­cred­i­ble, mov­ing, as­ton­ish­ing. He was unique, po­et­ic. The en­coun­ter gave rise to one of the books of mine that I love most, for many, many rea­sons, rang­ing from the cul­tural to the person­ ­al, from the po­lit­i­cal to the po­et­ic. The lit­er­ary. His sur­vival in the midst of des­ti­tu­tion and home­less­ness, his speech in the ab­sence of in­ter­loc­u­tors. I wrote that book of which I am and I am not the au­thor. It is his and it is mine. It is his be­cause it be­longs to him ma­te­ri­al­ly, and it is mine be­cause it be­longs to me pas­sion­ate­ly. But that book was made pos­si­ble by three en­coun­ters, the first of them to­tally as­ton­ish­ing. This was a lin­guis­tic ver­tigo that I have never again ex­pe­ri­enced since. I found him, or he found me, I’m not sure, in a pub­lic street, in a deserted place, a waste­land within the city. So. It hap­pened the way it had to happen.­ I didn’t know ei­ther that in 1986 I would start work­ing at the Universidad Tec­ nológica Metropolitana, thanks to rec­om­men­da­tions from the poet Eugenia Brito. Or that I would meet the bril­liant Oscar­ Aguilera. Oscar­ was a lin­guist who spoke sev­eral lan­guages, and his main project at that time in­volved the cre­a­tion of a dic­ tio­nary of the Kawésqar lan­guage, spo­ken by an in­dig­e­nous peo­ple liv­ing in the south­ern­most part of the coun­try. In the late sev­en­ties I had col­lab­o­rated with the an­thro­pol­o­gist Sonia Mon­ tecino on the pub­li­ca­tion of tes­ti­mo­nies by Mapuche wom­en. Of course, since the Mapuche are the most nu­mer­ous in­dig­e­nous peo­ple in the coun­try, I knew and ad­mired their his­to­ry, and I was very com­mit­ted to the work that I car­ried out. But the truth is that when it came to the Kawésqar peo­ple, I had only a bit of vague in­for­ma­tion. It was Os­car who talked to me. He talked to me and even led me to read this peo­ple’s his­to­ry. He recommended books. It was mov­ing to read about how they were grad­u­ally ex­ter­mi­nat­ed, go­ing ex­tinct. Os­car in­vited me to work with him on the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of cer­tain Kawésqar stories re­lated to plants and an­i­mals. The texts were in Kawésqar, and Os­car trans­lated all ­of the de­scrip­tions. My role in the col­lab­o­ra­tion was sim­ple. It consisted of pro­duc­ing an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the stories. This was published in a jour­nal at the univer­ ­sity where we worked. During those years there were only around forty Kawésqar peo­ple lef, and from an an­thro­po­log­i­cal point of view the Kawésqar were al­ready ex­tinct. Os­car trav­eled con­stantly to Puerto Edén.

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 The Kawésqar were no­mads, and they lived in the far south of the coun­try. They sailed along ca­nals to­gether with their fam­i­lies, and their work in­volved fish­ ing and the sell­ing of furs. In the 1940s, President Pedro Aguirre Cerda relocated them to Puerto Edén, which was set aside as a res­er­va­tion for them. He did this be­cause, according to the of­ficial ver­sion of the sto­ry, many mem­bers of this in­dig­ e­nous peo­ple were sick. Other versions­ of the story pointed to an ef­ort to deprive­ them of fish and the abil­ity to sell furs. But this cul­tural change was di­sas­trous. They remained on the island, lit­er­ally iso­lat­ed, with­out any work, liv­ing of of what the ships that oc­ca­sion­ally passed pro­vid­ed. For its part, the state sup­plied them with to­tally in­suf­ficient means for sus­tain­ing them­selves. I think that there was per­haps a “good in­ten­tion,” but this state ac­tion did not ac­count for their his­tory or the his­tory of their re­sis­tance. The ca­noe could not sim­ply be ex­changed for dry land be­cause the form of life that cen­ tered on the ca­noe entailed a lan­guage, a fam­i­ly, and a land­scape. I also thought that they were ex­ter­mi­nated in the midst of a so­cial si­lence that was ter­ri­fy­ing. Perhaps the most beau­ti­ful book about the Kawésqar was writ­ten by a French archeologist, Joseph Emperaire: The Nomads of the Sea, a book that should have formed part of school cur­ric­u­la, but the truth is that we knew so lit­tle of those peo­ples that it was as if an un­con­scious form of cen­sor­ship had been im­posed. Oscar­ Aguilera, at that time a young lin­guist, was de­voted to the Kawésqar lan­guage, and I spent hours with him, talking and, more im­por­tant­ly, learning.­ In 2015 and the sum­mer of 2016, I was work­ing on a book that brought to­gether lit­er­ary es­says and var­i­ous texts writ­ten dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ten years.3 The texts that were go­ing to find their way into the book mainly addressed ques­tions of lit­er­ a­ture, art, and pol­i­tics. I was hav­ing trou­ble with the struc­ture of the book, which seemed rig­id, un­in­ter­est­ing, mo­not­o­nous. Although I had se­lected the texts, the book didn’t con­vince me at all­. That was when I remem­ ­bered the work that I had done with Oscar­ and that in­volved the Kawésqar lan­guage. I de­cided (with per­mis­sion from Os­car) to use these old texts as a guid­ing thread in the book. And to bring my own es­say­is­tic writ­ing into con­tact with the Kawésqar lan­guage, nam­ing that lan­guage’s spaces. I think the most im­por­tant thing about the book came from that pro­cess. It gave the book mean­ing. I started think­ing again about the pain­ful ex­tinc­tion of the Kawésqar peo­ple. That same year, in 2016, I trav­eled to give my clas­ses at . At that very mo­ment, women in Argentina had be­gun to cir­cu­late the slo­gan “NI UNA MENOS,” mean­ing “NOT ONE LESS,” as a re­sponse to the nu­mer­ous and sys­ tem­atic femicides that kept hap­pen­ing. The slo­gan caught on quickly in sev­eral countries, in­clud­ing Chile. When I was in New York, Susana Draper, a pro­fes­sor at

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Princeton, wrote to me and told me that there would be a pro­test in Washington Square, called by Ni Una Menos. When I ar­rived in the pla­za, a group of peo­ple were gath­ered there, and I stood next to a young woman who turned out to be a Chilean sci­en­tist whom I didn’t know. Suddenly I saw a man ad­vance to­ward her, and she in­tro­duced me to him. He’s Carlos Edén, she said, he’s Kawésqar. Today very few mem­bers of the Kawésqar peo­ple sur­vive. Some ten peo­ple who are con­sid­ered “Living Human Treasures” by UNESCO. And there in the street, in the middle­ of a plaza in New York, I met one of these peo­ple. It seemed like some­ thing close to an im­pos­si­bil­i­ty. I told him about my in­ter­est. We agreed to meet the fol­low­ing week. He knew Os­car Aguilera. Os­car also knew him. He’s deaf, he told me. Carlos Edén and I met one an­other once a week dur­ing the months when I was in New York. Had hours of con­ver­sa­tions. During these meet­ings, I got to know his sto­ry. The story of a very pre­car­i­ous life. From Puerto Edén to , from Santiago to Mendoza, from Mendoza to the Bronx. And I can­not stop think­ing about the fact that I met Carlos Edén, who is eighty years old, while he was responding to the call of NI UNA MENOS. It was par­a­dox­i­cal. I feel as though that day time and space came to­gether in a pas­sion­ate plot, as though that day, for once, they were of one mind.

DIAMELA ELTIT is one of ’s most dar­ing writ­ers. She be­gan her en­gage­ ment with lit­er­a­ture in her na­tive Chile dur­ing the years of the Pinochet dic­ta­tor­ship, when she par­tic­i­pated in the col­lec­tive CADA, stag­ing art ac­tions against the dic­ta­tor­ ship, and published her first nov­els, in­clud­ing Lumpérica (1983), trans­lated into En­glish as E. Luminata (1997). Eltit is the au­thor of many other books; those trans­lated into En­glish in­clude The Fourth World (1995), Sacred Cow (1995), Custody of the Eyes (2005), and (with Paz Errázuriz) Soul’s Infarct (2009). She has re­ceived fel­low­ships from the Ford Foundation, the Fondo Nacional de Investigaciones, the Social Science Research Council, CONICYT, and the Gugenheim Foundation, and held po­si­tions as writ­er-in- res­i­dence at Brown University, Washington University in St. Louis, ­lumCo ­bia University, the University of California, Berkeley, the , Stanford University, and . She is cur­rently the Distinguished Global Professor of Creative Writing in Span­ish at New York University.

Acknowledgments This is the text of a talk given by Eltit at the University of California, Berkeley, on Oc­to­ber 11, 2018. I would like to thank Professor Natalia Brizuela for the in­vi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in an important se­ries of events or­ga­nized by the Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to ac­knowl­edge as well my dear friend, the critic and pro­fes­sor Francine Masiello, and all­ of the peo­ple who attended the event.

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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Notes 1. Translator’s Note: See Diamela Eltit, Lumpérica (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, 1983); translated into English by Ronald Christ as E. Luminata (Santa Fe, NM: Lumen Books, 1997). 2. Translator’s Note: This is the figure at the center of Eltit’s book El padre mío (Santiago: Francisco Zegers, 1989). The book features an introduction by Eltit, followed by transcriptions of three speeches given, or monologues delivered, by the homeless man described here. 3. Translator’s Note: See Diamela Eltit, Réplicas: Escritos sobre literatura, arte y política (Santiago: Seix Barral, 2016).

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