Urgent Writings on the Social Uprising in Chile 2019-2022: Lom’s 18 de Octubre and Pehuen’s Libros para la Contingencia Collections in the Dispute over the Present Time

Abstract

Between 2019 and 2022, a set of “urgent writings” circulated through public spaces with the aim of trying to understand, but also to politically influence, the debate about what the final destructuring of the transnational experience in Chile meant. Although the debate on the limits of the Chilean Transition had begun even before it took place, the writings published in the midst of the largest social mobilization since 1990 introduced new signs of readings, new ways of intervening, and performing reality, from publishers of different kinds, intensively and normatively disputing the conceptualization of the present time. From the perspective of intellectual history and the theory of performativity, we will specifically analyze the sociopolitical narratives that compromised the collections 18 de Octubre by LOM Ediciones and Libros para la Contingencia by Pehuén Ediciones, due to their widespread distribution and important position in the Chilean intellectual field. This will help us understand how the independent publishing sector and critical intellectuals played an intricate role in a period where the dispute over the nomination of time became central.