Colloquium, Department of Classical Studies
Thursday, February 12, 2025
4:45-6:15pm
200 College Hall
In Medea mapuche, Juan Radrigán constructs a protagonist who is deeply tied to her Mapuche identity. Kütral, the play’s Medea analog, lives in a Mapuche community, performs Mapuche rituals, and directly converses with important tribal and religious figures. Her deeply-rooted Mapuche identity seamlessly blends with characteristics that make her an unmistakable Medea, such as her intense emotions, her unforgiving nature, and her connection to the divine. Through a close reading of select passages of Medea mapuche that quote Euripides’ Medea, this talk explores how Radrigán attempts to present his audience with a Medea-Kütral who acts as a figure of cultural authority in Medea mapuche.
The second half of the talk explores the way that the Mapuche people have been constructed in Chilean literature and history as both “true Chileans” and part of Chile’s distant history rather than a surviving and suppressed contemporary people. The talk then confronts the difficulty laid out by Gayatri Spivak and other postcolonial scholars that to respect and empower the subaltern is to refuse to speak on their behalf. Although the innovation to indigenize Medea presents intriguing new possibilities for one of Greek literature’s most famous women, this talk will argue that Radrigán’s play can be read, against the grain of his progressive intentions, as inadvertently continuing the tradition of Medea as the “Other”.
*4:15-4:45 pm: Coffee and cookies in Cohen Hall 2nd Floor Lounge. All are welcome.