Forty Years after 'Lumpérica' by Diamela Eltit: Keys to Reading and Writing for the Present Millennium

Abstract

The question of how to read Lumpérica by Diamela Eltit, forty years after its publication, is addressed in this dossier through a diversity of critical approaches. Lumpérica stands as one of the most complex and challenging novels published during the dictatorship, in a decade marked by profound changes in the region. This dossier aims not only to establish a memory of readings that link Eltit's historic novel to the commemoration of fifty years since the coup d'état but also to offer readers the possibility of situating the novel within other imaginaries—even those unimaginable both for the author and for the critical machinery that has shaped its complex intelligibility over the past forty years.