Materiality, Writing and Contemporaneity in La filial (2012) by Matías Celedón and Chilean Electric (2015) by Nona Fernández

Abstract

In The Social Life of Things Arjun Appadurai states that although it may be true that human actors encode things with meaning, from a methodological point of view, it is things- in-motion that illuminate its social and human context. In Vibrant Matter Jane Bennett describes the “power of things ”as a strange ability of common objects, created by the hand of the man, to exceed their status as mere objects and manifest traces of independence or vitality, constituting the outside of our own experience (xvi). In this article I intend to address La filial by Matías Celedón and Chilean Electric by Nona Fernández under the framework proposed by the new materialisms. In these works, the materiality of electric light (or its absence) is actant and is therefore capable of causing events. In these works the materiality becomes palpable in writing.