Description
Book SynopsisArt from a Fractured Past is an interdisciplinary collection examining how Peruvians are representing, and attempting to make sense of, the violence of the 1980s and 1990s through art, including drawings, monuments, fiction, theater, and cinema.
Trade Review"Are there limits to representation? Is it possible to convey experiences that were unbearable, unspeakable, and inhuman? This collection's presentation and discussion of grounded, micro-level studies of Peruvian artistic representations show that in spite of all, people can and do express their feelings about violence and horror."—
Elizabeth Jelin, author of
State Repression and the Labors of Memory"Cynthia E. Milton's stunning, inter-disciplinary collection illuminates how art intervenes in the memory of politics and the politics of memory in post-civil conflict Peru."—
Diana Taylor, author of
The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas"This is a fascinating collection of essays about individual and collective memories in the aftermath of the violence that plagued Peru from 1980 until the mid-1990s. One of the richest collections available on the workings of memory in post-traumatic societies, it illuminates the complex and changing ways in which people recall and represent their experiences with violence, war, human rights violations, silencing, and exclusion."—
Carlos Aguirre, author of
The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935“Among other fields, this book represents a timely and important contribution to scholarship on the relationship between memory and art in post conflict societies, Latin American popular cultures and, of course, recent Peruvian history and culture.” -- Patricia Oliart * Bulletin of Hispanic Studies *
“Milton’s volume succeeds in providing a smart and timely analysis of the rich array of artistic expressions that participate in the making of Peru’s post-conflict landscape.” -- Joseph P. Feldman * Americas *
"
Art from a Fractured Past is a valuable compilation of works connected by the theme of the production of art in postwar Peru. It holds the reader’s attention by presenting art in its different forms of expression while showing how memory and truth-telling work in different ways, spaces, and periods." -- Nathalie Koc Menard * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"Cynthia Milton has gathered leading anthropologists, artists, literary theorists, musicologists, and historians, whose contributions compose a fascinating and coherent collection." -- Katherine Hite * Latin American Research Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Art from Peru's Fractured Past / Cynthia E. Milton
Part One. Visual Representations of Recent Pasts
1. Images of Truth: Rescuing Memories of Peru's Internal War through Testimonial Art / Cynthia E. Milton
2. Chungui: Ethnographic Drawings of Violence and Traces of Memory / Edilberto Jiménez Quispe
3. Narrating Stories, Representing Memories:
Retablos and Violence in Peru / María Eugenia Ulfe
Part Two. Telling Stories of Political Violence
4. Violence, Guilt, and Repetition: Alonso Cueto's Novel
La Hora Azul / Víctor Vich
5.
Rupay: (Hi)stories of Political Violence in Peru, 1980–1984 / Luis Rossell, Alfredo Villar, and Jesús Cossio
6. Ayacuchano Cinema and the Filming of Violence: Interview with Palito Ortega Matute / Ponciano del Pino
Part Three. Performing a Fractured Past
7. Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca / Ricardo Caro Cárdenas
8. Colliding with Memory: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani's
Sin Título, Técnica Mixta / Cynthia M. Garza
9. The "Voice of the Victims": Testimonial Songs in Rural Ayachucho / Jonathan Ritter
Afterword. The Artist's Truth: The Post-Auschwitz Predicament after Latin America's Age of Dirty Wars / Steve J. Stern
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
