Intersections of Politics, Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Life in Contemporary Chilean Criticism and Art

Abstract

WI L L Y TH A Y E R O P E N S H I S B O O K TE C N O L O G Í A S D E L A C R Í T I C A WITH THE provocative statement that criticism—which connotes critical thought, critique, and theory as well as art—is inevitably related to life: “As though criticism and life always belonged, in each case, to the same band” (2010, 11). Indeed, the figure of life has been a central concern of critical theory, from discussions of the relations between life, history, representation, and power in the work of such thinkers as Heidegger, Benjamin, Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Esposito, and others, to more recent considerations of technological advances in biopower, different configurations of the posthuman, and the unforeseeable extremes of the anthropocene. Such reflections have been