ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the book piracy discussion in Chile in connection with the work of Chilean crónica writer and performer Pedro Lemebel. The chapter is particularly interested in what could be called the special status of book piracy in the country. It proposes that Lemebel’s position on piracy is directly connected to his concept of what literature is and may be, to his self-understanding as a cultural producer, and to his relation with the literary market and its forms of prestige and authority. The chapter further posits that this issue is best understood against the backdrop of the history of mass book publication in Chile and the evolution of the concept of national culture over the last half century in that country. This history of national culture-building goes from the radical and expansive efforts for a state-driven, mass-produced national culture of the Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) to the equally radical privatization of publishing, along with social and individual life, under the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990) and in the long post-dictatorship period reaching to the present.
