ABSTRACT
There exist myriad ways to fragment texts, to conflate images and to (con)fuse signs, and this book identifies and explores the strategies and political consequences of many of these techniques in Spanish American art, performance and literature. Diamela Eltit, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Guillermo Gómez-Peña each employ multiple media in conjunction with writing to position themselves within contemporary crises of representation. Each experiments with conflated imagery and fractured narrative to stake a position within, and to develop a critique of, the politics of representation. In addition to fragmentation, their (con) fusing strategies include the simultaneous manipulation of multiple genres and media. In this chapter I explore the theoretical underpinnings of positionality that unite three disparate artists, each of whom realizes that he or she cannot escape from the systems that each strives to critique. Aware that no place outside of language, culture, discourse or representation exists, these artists explicitly call attention to this situation. The purpose of this chapter is to theorize a critical locus-a postmodern position-from which political critique remains possible.
