Bárbara Fernández Melleda: "© Copyright (2003) by Nadia Prado: Denouncing the Neo-Colonial and Challenging the Neoliberal"
© Copyright (2003) by Nadia Prado: Denouncing the Neo-Colonial and Challenging the Neoliberal
29 November, 5.30pm: 50 George Square; G.05
We are excited to announce the fifth LLC Work-in-Progress Seminar of this year: Bárbara Fernández Melleda, a 4th year PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies, will be talking about "© Copyright (2003) by Nadia Prado: Denouncing the Neo-Colonial and Challenging the Neoliberal".
Tea, coffee and snacks will be offered before the seminar.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A, after which we'll continue the discussion in the pub.
Join us if you can!
Bio:
Bárbara is a 4th year PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies. She arrived in Edinburgh in 2014, after studying a BA in English Literature and Linguistics at the Catholic University in Chile and an MA in Literature at Universidad de Chile. She is currently the prologist of publisher La Joyita Cartonera and she has so far worked with three texts which you can find at the Centre for Research Collections in our library. Bárbara’s research interests go from women’s poetic writing, to biblical presence in Latin American poetry, to a critique of neoliberalism through literary texts, to the roles of eroticism and pornography. Her current PhD project is entitled Neoliberalism and its Discontents: Three Decades of Chilean Women’s Poetry (1980-2010).
Abstract:
The present analysis is part of a 6 case study doctoral project entitled Neoliberalism and its Discontents: Three Decades of Chilean Women’s Poetry (1980-2010). Prado’s work is the 5th case analysed and it is within a larger study that comprises three decades of Chilean women’s poetic work and they way in which they react or challenge neoliberalism, as imposed by Augusto Pinochet’s regime during the 1980s. In the case of © Copyright (2003), the text engages with its politico-economic context as the 2000s in Chile did not see much change from previous times, especially in terms of social and economic policy—therefore, the extreme neoliberal reform Chile went through was still central to the country, even after over 10 years of democratic rule led by a moderate left. With inequality levels growing rapidly, and with the influence of US consumerism, Chilean society was completely immersed in a neoliberal world. Nadia Prado’s poem © Copyright is emphatic to criticise the early 2000s, as times in which globalisation has failed majorities and has marginalised entire groups. From a mestizo and Latin Americanist approach, Pradian writing succeeds in directly denouncing the neo-colonial practices imposed upon América through the commodification of formerly non-exchangeable intangibles, such as the idea of the exotic or the native. Her text also expands on a criticism of Chilean politics and the impossibility of dealing with the country’s recent past, as the machinery of neoliberal life dazzles subjects and hides a dark and tortuous history that, in her text, is brought back in an attempt to awaken her readers to deal with. This presentation will consist on commenting relevant quotations from the text, which will be presented in both Spanish and English.