La literatura de los nietos: sobre “Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo” de Rafael Guendelman Hales
Antonio Urrutia LuxoroEl autor materializa la tríada conceptual entre lenguaje, memoria y territorio a través del archivo y la fotografía. Retomando la posibilidad de una literatura de los nietos, se hace necesario pensar las trayectorias históricas puestas en juego –o campo de batalla– a lo largo del relato visual. Trayectorias históricas acompañadas de desplazamientos territoriales, que a su vez dan cuenta de las utopías y de los fracasos de dichos proyectos políticos, ahora experimentados a nivel familiar y documentados en el libro. Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos en hebreo puede leerse como el remake de una road-movie de más de seis décadas entre Chile e Israel, o también, como se desprende de los textos de Claudio Guerrero, como un documental falso. Por alguna razón que todavía desconozco, el libro contiene imágenes de la revuelta de octubre de 2019. La revuelta de los nietos, que tuvimos la oportunidad de hacer documental nuestra literatura de ficción. Era demasiado bella para ser real. El resto, dijo Hamlet, es silencio. El libro se lanzará este sábado a las 19.00 horas en Sala de Máquinas, en el barrio Bellavista.
En esta ocasión, Guendelman presenta el libro “Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo” (2022), esto, bajo el cuidado y edición de Claudio Guerrero y el diseño de Gracia Echeverría. Guerrero ya ha indagado en la relación entre lenguaje y memoria a partir de otra artista: la chileno-italiana Claudia Lee, quién a principios de este año expuso una contundente retrospectiva de 20 años de producción visual en el MAC (sede Parque Forestal).
A grandes rasgos, “Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo” es un libro de artista bastante curioso como objeto cultural, más allá de que el formato “libro de artista” se preste para extravagancias de toda índole, como lo han demostrado otros artistas chilenos, entre ellos Juan Luis Martínez, conocido por los míticos, escasos y carísimos ejemplares de La nueva novela (1977), libro de artista en el que se pueden encontrar hasta anzuelos y bolsas de tierra en su interior.
Si bien este libro de Guendelman editado por Guerrero prescinde de ese tipo de excentricidades, la simpleza de su factura implica un desafío en su lectura y recepción crítica, en la medida de que agrupa elementos propios de diversas tipologías editoriales que exceden al libro-literario como objeto cultural que cumple con determinadas características formales que lo identifican como tal.
«Formas de volver a casa» (2011), la tercera novela del escritor chileno Alejandro Zambra, incluye un capítulo llamado “La literatura de los hijos”, conceptualizado por la crítica literaria local para dar cuenta de un fenómeno generacional que excede y a la vez contiene parte de la literatura de Zambra.
Así, “La literatura de los hijos” refiere a aquellas escrituras de quienes vivieron la dictadura como niños o adolescentes, repitiéndose la metáfora del hogar como espacio de intimidad familiar, en el que los protagonistas –los hijos– retornan para cobrar cuentas ético-morales a sus progenitores, por lo que hicieron o dejaron de hacer políticamente en esos años de violencia institucional. En ese sentido, filial y genealógico, la tesitura que adopta el relato entre imagen y palabra elaborado por Guendelman es el de una literatura visual de los nietos; esos sujetos irresponsables –sin deberes–, exculpados, pero con todo el derecho a la herencia familiar e histórica que los antecede. Sólo un nieto puede intrusear en el baúl de su abuela sin ofender a la respetable veterana.
De un modo similar a la literatura de Zambra, la familia atraviesa la obra de Guendelman como un eje conceptual que se distancia del discurso conservador con el que usualmente se alude a “lo familiar”, en tanto símil de la propiedad privada que se debe preservar a toda costa, para proteger su legado y así mantenerlo inviolable.
A la manera del filósofo italiano Giorgio Agamben, Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo profana el legado familiar de su autor, volviendo pedestre el idioma sagrado –el hebreo– para ofrecerlo despojado de ocultismos, traducido al español y al inglés para el goce profano del lector. Conocido es el breve aforismo italiano “traduttore, traditore” (traductor, traidor), que cobra especial relevancia cuando se piensan los procesos de sincretismo cultural mediados por el lenguaje; por ejemplo, la colonización de América estudiada a nivel lingüístico por Tzvetan Todorov.
Para el lingüista búlgaro, la traducción de las lenguas amerindias al castellano fue un proceso de traición, a propósito de la Malinche, espía y traductora indígena de Hernán Cortés, que entregó a su pueblo a la corona española a través de la profanación del lenguaje autóctono. Al respecto, Rafael Guendelman juguetea paródicamente a ser la Malinche traidora de su herencia judía a través de su producción visual, valiéndose de la fotografía y el archivo como armas de combate en lugar del lenguaje.
En palabras del artista:
“El día que enterramos a mi abuela fue la primera vez que visité el cementerio judío en Recoleta. Recuerdo el ataúd sencillo con un empalillado de pino, que dejaba ver entre cada listón, el cuerpo de mi abuela en una sábana blanca. Toda la familia la enterró. Un día, años más tarde, me encontré con las cosas que quedaron de mi abuela, había unos extraños cuadernos con palabras sueltas en español y en hebreo. Palabras o frases que no tenían sentido aparente en sí mismas, pero que de alguna forma armaban el imaginario de un Israel abstracto y subjetivo. Más tarde supe que no sólo le sirvieron a ella para aprender hebreo, sino también para enseñar español a sus amigas de Tel Aviv”.
El libro ordena esas palabras y frases sueltas de la “A” a la “Y”, disponiendo cada una en una página diferente del libro y acompañadas de una fotografía a modo de ilustración de su significado, como si se tratase de un diccionario para turistas. El formato del libro escogido no es casual, pues resulta similar a la de la obsoleta Turistel, guía turística impresa inolvidable para quienes fuimos veraneantes entre los 80 y principios de los 2000 en Chile. Es en la yuxtaposición de imágenes y palabras donde aparece el gesto autoral e irónico en la publicación impresa, ya que varias de las fotografías no coinciden con el sentido literal de la palabra o frase suelta, incluso rayando en la belleza sublime de la crueldad.
En ese sentido, es necesario recalcar que algunas fotografías incluidas en el libro provienen del archivo familiar de su autor y otras fueron captada por él mismo. Fechadas entre 1955 y 2021, corresponden a imágenes de un territorio atravesado por la guerra permanente y la masacre humana de un pueblo-nación por el otro: “Palestina ocupada” (así lo llama la madre del artista, nieta de palestinos y jordanos).
Esta yuxtaposición disociada entre imagen y palabra nos recuerda finalmente que toda lengua se sostiene en la arbitrariedad de la relación entre significado y significante, lo que se dice y cómo se lo dice. En este marco, destacan dos páginas de toda la serie compuesta por Guendelman.
La primera: una fotografía de 1973 de un paseo familiar en la plaza de San José de Maipo, donde aparece una cámara fotográfica minutera asociada a la frase “Arma de combate”, atribuyéndole características bélicas a la propia fotografía; esa analogía entre la cámara y el arma remite ineludiblemente a uno de los aforismos que Susan Sontag planteó sobre la fotografía: no es casual que los verbos alusivos al acto fotográfico, entre ellos, capturar y disparar, emanen un aroma a violencia.
La segunda fotografía fue tomada por el artista en Tel-Aviv el 2017. En la sección superior, el mostrador de una tienda de cotillón en el día nacional de Israel; en la inferior, una vitrina con 18 revólveres del museo de la fuerza de defensa de Israel. Ambos recortes –el cotillón israelita y el arsenal– son consignados con la frase “Campamento de diversión”.
Rafael Guendelman materializa la tríada conceptual entre lenguaje, memoria y territorio a través del archivo y la fotografía. Retomando la posibilidad de una literatura de los nietos, se hace necesario pensar las trayectorias históricas puestas en juego –o campo de batalla– a lo largo del relato visual.
Trayectorias históricas acompañadas de desplazamientos territoriales, que a su vez dan cuenta de las utopías y de los fracasos de dichos proyectos políticos, ahora experimentados a nivel familiar y documentados en el libro. Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos en hebreo puede leerse como el remake de una road-movie de más de seis décadas entre Chile e Israel, o también, como se desprende de los textos de Claudio Guerrero, como un documental falso. Por alguna razón que todavía desconozco, el libro contiene imágenes de la revuelta de octubre de 2019. La revuelta de los nietos, que tuvimos la oportunidad de hacer documental nuestra literatura de ficción. Era demasiado bella para ser real. El resto, dijo Hamlet, es silencio.
The Literature of the Grandchildren: On Rafael Guendelman Hales’s “We Study and Write Hebrew”
Antonio Urrutia Luxoro
The author brings to life the conceptual triad of language, memory, and territory through archives and photography. By revisiting the possibility of a literature of the grandchildren, it becomes necessary to reflect on the historical trajectories at stake—or the battlefield—throughout the visual narrative. Historical trajectories accompanied by territorial displacements, which in turn bear witness to the utopias and failures of those political projects, now experienced at the family level and documented in the book. *We Study and Write in Hebrew* can be read as the remake of a road movie spanning more than six decades between Chile and Israel, or also, as is evident from Claudio Guerrero’s texts, as a mockumentary. For some reason I still don’t know, the book contains images of the October 2019 uprising. The uprising of the grandchildren, which gave us the opportunity to turn our fictional literature into a documentary. It was too beautiful to be real. The rest, said Hamlet, is silence. The book will be launched this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. at Sala de Máquinas, in the Bellavista neighborhood.
Language, memory, and territory are three themes that contemporary Chilean art has explored through the mnemonic potential of video and photography, especially in the wake of the coup. This capacity has been amplified by migratory flows, as is the case with the body of work and biography of audiovisual artist Rafael Guendelman Hales, shaped by the Palestinian diaspora, amidst another diaspora: the Israeli one.
On this occasion, Guendelman presents the book “We Study and Write Hebrew” (2022), curated and edited by Claudio Guerrero and designed by Gracia Echeverría. Guerrero has previously explored the relationship between language and memory through the work of another artist: the Chilean-Italian Claudia Lee, who earlier this year presented a compelling retrospective of 20 years of visual production at the MAC (Parque Forestal venue).
![]()
Broadly speaking, “We Study and Write Hebrew” is a rather intriguing artist’s book as a cultural object, even setting aside the fact that the “artist’s book” format lends itself to all manner of eccentricities, as other Chilean artists have demonstrated, including Juan Luis Martínez, known for the legendary, scarce, and extremely expensive copies of *La nueva novela* (1977), an artist’s book in which one can find everything from fishhooks to bags of dirt inside.
Although this book by Guendelman, published by Guerrero, dispenses with such eccentricities, the simplicity of its craftsmanship poses a challenge to its reading and critical reception, insofar as it brings together elements characteristic of various publishing formats that go beyond the literary book as a cultural object that meets certain formal characteristics identifying it as such.
“We Study and Write Hebrew” is a motley collection; at first glance, one can discern elements typical of a photobook, a family album, a primer, a travel guide, and a photo-novel. All of this is presented with a subtle touch of irony in the visual narrative, steering clear of the tiresome and dramatic clichés found in works that address diasporas, exiles, and uprooting; a humorous license that can only be afforded by those who have suffered such direct and symbolic violence themselves, or—as is the case here—by their immediate family members. The artist is of Jewish descent on his father’s side and Palestinian on his mother’s. Much of the material comprising the body of this book was found among the belongings of the artist’s paternal grandmother, years after her death.
“Ways of Returning Home” (2011), the third novel by Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, includes a chapter titled “The Literature of the Children,” a term coined by local literary critics to describe a generational phenomenon that both transcends and encompasses part of Zambra’s literary work.
Thus, “The Literature of the Children” refers to the writings of those who lived through the dictatorship as children or adolescents, repeating the metaphor of the home as a space of family intimacy, to which the protagonists—the children—return to settle ethical and moral scores with their parents for what they did or failed to do politically during those years of institutional violence. In this filial and genealogical sense, the stance adopted by Guendelman’s narrative—which straddles image and word—is that of a visual literature of the grandchildren; those irresponsible subjects—free of duties—exonerated, yet fully entitled to the family and historical legacy that precedes them. Only a grandchild can rummage through his grandmother’s trunk without offending the respectable veteran.
In a manner similar to Zambra’s literature, the family runs through Guendelman’s work as a conceptual axis that distances itself from the conservative discourse with which “the family” is usually invoked—as a simile for private property that must be preserved at all costs to protect its legacy and thus keep it inviolable.
In the style of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, *Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo* secularizes the author’s family legacy, rendering the sacred language—Hebrew—accessible to the common reader, stripping it of its mysticism and translating it into Spanish and English for the reader’s secular enjoyment. The brief Italian aphorism “traduttore, traditore” (translator, traitor) is well known, and it takes on special relevance when considering the processes of cultural syncretism mediated by language; for example, the colonization of the Americas studied from a linguistic perspective by Tzvetan Todorov.
![]()
For the Bulgarian linguist, the translation of Amerindian languages into Spanish was a process of betrayal, in reference to La Malinche, Hernán Cortés’s indigenous spy and translator, who surrendered her people to the Spanish crown through the desecration of the native language. In this regard, Rafael Guendelman playfully parodies the role of La Malinche, a traitor to her Jewish heritage, through his visual work, using photography and the archive as weapons of combat rather than language.
In the artist’s own words:
“The day we buried my grandmother was the first time I visited the Jewish cemetery in Recoleta. I remember the simple pine coffin, with slats that allowed a glimpse of my grandmother’s body wrapped in a white sheet. The whole family buried her. One day, years later, I came across the things left behind by my grandmother; there were some strange notebooks with scattered words in Spanish and Hebrew. Words or phrases that made no apparent sense on their own, but that somehow pieced together the image of an abstract and subjective Israel. Later I learned that they served not only to help her learn Hebrew, but also to teach Spanish to her friends in Tel Aviv.”
![]()
The book arranges these scattered words and phrases from “A” to “Y,” placing each on a different page of the book and accompanying it with a photograph to illustrate its meaning, as if it were a tourist dictionary. The chosen book format is no accident, as it resembles that of the obsolete Turistel, an unforgettable printed tourist guide for those of us who vacationed in Chile between the 1980s and the early 2000s. It is in the juxtaposition of images and words that the author’s ironic touch appears in the printed publication, as several of the photographs do not correspond to the literal meaning of the word or phrase, even bordering on the sublime beauty of cruelty.
In this regard, it is important to note that some of the photographs included in the book come from the author’s family archive, while others were taken by the author himself. Dating from 1955 to 2021, they depict a territory torn apart by constant war and the massacre of one people-nation by another: “Occupied Palestine” (as the artist’s mother, the granddaughter of Palestinians and Jordanians, calls it).
This dissociated juxtaposition of image and word ultimately reminds us that all language rests on the arbitrariness of the relationship between signified and signifier—what is said and how it is said. Within this framework, two pages stand out from the entire series created by Guendelman.
The first: a 1973 photograph of a family outing in the plaza of San José de Maipo, featuring a small camera paired with the phrase “Weapon of War,” attributing martial characteristics to the photograph itself; that analogy between the camera and the weapon inevitably refers to one of the aphorisms Susan Sontag put forward about photography: it is no coincidence that verbs alluding to the photographic act, including “capture” and “shoot,” carry a whiff of violence.
The second photograph was taken by the artist in Tel Aviv in 2017. In the upper section, the counter of a party supply store on Israel’s national holiday; in the lower section, a display case with 18 revolvers from the Israel Defense Forces Museum. Both images—the Israeli party supplies and the arsenal—are captioned with the phrase “Fun Camp.”
Rafael Guendelman materializes the conceptual triad of language, memory, and territory through the archive and photography. Returning to the possibility of a literature of the grandchildren, it becomes necessary to consider the historical trajectories brought into play—or the battlefield—throughout the visual narrative.
![]()
Historical trajectories accompanied by territorial displacements, which in turn account for the utopias and failures of those political projects, now experienced at the family level and documented in the book. *We Study and Write in Hebrew* can be read as the remake of a road movie spanning more than six decades between Chile and Israel, or also, as suggested by Claudio Guerrero’s texts, as a mockumentary. For some reason I still don’t know, the book contains images of the October 2019 uprising. The uprising of the grandchildren, which gave us the opportunity to turn our fictional literature into a documentary. It was too beautiful to be real. The rest, said Hamlet, is silence.
Antonio Urrutia Luxoro
The author brings to life the conceptual triad of language, memory, and territory through archives and photography. By revisiting the possibility of a literature of the grandchildren, it becomes necessary to reflect on the historical trajectories at stake—or the battlefield—throughout the visual narrative. Historical trajectories accompanied by territorial displacements, which in turn bear witness to the utopias and failures of those political projects, now experienced at the family level and documented in the book. *We Study and Write in Hebrew* can be read as the remake of a road movie spanning more than six decades between Chile and Israel, or also, as is evident from Claudio Guerrero’s texts, as a mockumentary. For some reason I still don’t know, the book contains images of the October 2019 uprising. The uprising of the grandchildren, which gave us the opportunity to turn our fictional literature into a documentary. It was too beautiful to be real. The rest, said Hamlet, is silence. The book will be launched this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. at Sala de Máquinas, in the Bellavista neighborhood.
Language, memory, and territory are three themes that contemporary Chilean art has explored through the mnemonic potential of video and photography, especially in the wake of the coup. This capacity has been amplified by migratory flows, as is the case with the body of work and biography of audiovisual artist Rafael Guendelman Hales, shaped by the Palestinian diaspora, amidst another diaspora: the Israeli one.
On this occasion, Guendelman presents the book “We Study and Write Hebrew” (2022), curated and edited by Claudio Guerrero and designed by Gracia Echeverría. Guerrero has previously explored the relationship between language and memory through the work of another artist: the Chilean-Italian Claudia Lee, who earlier this year presented a compelling retrospective of 20 years of visual production at the MAC (Parque Forestal venue).
Broadly speaking, “We Study and Write Hebrew” is a rather intriguing artist’s book as a cultural object, even setting aside the fact that the “artist’s book” format lends itself to all manner of eccentricities, as other Chilean artists have demonstrated, including Juan Luis Martínez, known for the legendary, scarce, and extremely expensive copies of *La nueva novela* (1977), an artist’s book in which one can find everything from fishhooks to bags of dirt inside.
Although this book by Guendelman, published by Guerrero, dispenses with such eccentricities, the simplicity of its craftsmanship poses a challenge to its reading and critical reception, insofar as it brings together elements characteristic of various publishing formats that go beyond the literary book as a cultural object that meets certain formal characteristics identifying it as such.
“We Study and Write Hebrew” is a motley collection; at first glance, one can discern elements typical of a photobook, a family album, a primer, a travel guide, and a photo-novel. All of this is presented with a subtle touch of irony in the visual narrative, steering clear of the tiresome and dramatic clichés found in works that address diasporas, exiles, and uprooting; a humorous license that can only be afforded by those who have suffered such direct and symbolic violence themselves, or—as is the case here—by their immediate family members. The artist is of Jewish descent on his father’s side and Palestinian on his mother’s. Much of the material comprising the body of this book was found among the belongings of the artist’s paternal grandmother, years after her death.
“Ways of Returning Home” (2011), the third novel by Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, includes a chapter titled “The Literature of the Children,” a term coined by local literary critics to describe a generational phenomenon that both transcends and encompasses part of Zambra’s literary work.
Thus, “The Literature of the Children” refers to the writings of those who lived through the dictatorship as children or adolescents, repeating the metaphor of the home as a space of family intimacy, to which the protagonists—the children—return to settle ethical and moral scores with their parents for what they did or failed to do politically during those years of institutional violence. In this filial and genealogical sense, the stance adopted by Guendelman’s narrative—which straddles image and word—is that of a visual literature of the grandchildren; those irresponsible subjects—free of duties—exonerated, yet fully entitled to the family and historical legacy that precedes them. Only a grandchild can rummage through his grandmother’s trunk without offending the respectable veteran.
In a manner similar to Zambra’s literature, the family runs through Guendelman’s work as a conceptual axis that distances itself from the conservative discourse with which “the family” is usually invoked—as a simile for private property that must be preserved at all costs to protect its legacy and thus keep it inviolable.
In the style of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, *Nosotros estudiamos y escribimos hebreo* secularizes the author’s family legacy, rendering the sacred language—Hebrew—accessible to the common reader, stripping it of its mysticism and translating it into Spanish and English for the reader’s secular enjoyment. The brief Italian aphorism “traduttore, traditore” (translator, traitor) is well known, and it takes on special relevance when considering the processes of cultural syncretism mediated by language; for example, the colonization of the Americas studied from a linguistic perspective by Tzvetan Todorov.
For the Bulgarian linguist, the translation of Amerindian languages into Spanish was a process of betrayal, in reference to La Malinche, Hernán Cortés’s indigenous spy and translator, who surrendered her people to the Spanish crown through the desecration of the native language. In this regard, Rafael Guendelman playfully parodies the role of La Malinche, a traitor to her Jewish heritage, through his visual work, using photography and the archive as weapons of combat rather than language.
In the artist’s own words:
“The day we buried my grandmother was the first time I visited the Jewish cemetery in Recoleta. I remember the simple pine coffin, with slats that allowed a glimpse of my grandmother’s body wrapped in a white sheet. The whole family buried her. One day, years later, I came across the things left behind by my grandmother; there were some strange notebooks with scattered words in Spanish and Hebrew. Words or phrases that made no apparent sense on their own, but that somehow pieced together the image of an abstract and subjective Israel. Later I learned that they served not only to help her learn Hebrew, but also to teach Spanish to her friends in Tel Aviv.”
The book arranges these scattered words and phrases from “A” to “Y,” placing each on a different page of the book and accompanying it with a photograph to illustrate its meaning, as if it were a tourist dictionary. The chosen book format is no accident, as it resembles that of the obsolete Turistel, an unforgettable printed tourist guide for those of us who vacationed in Chile between the 1980s and the early 2000s. It is in the juxtaposition of images and words that the author’s ironic touch appears in the printed publication, as several of the photographs do not correspond to the literal meaning of the word or phrase, even bordering on the sublime beauty of cruelty.
In this regard, it is important to note that some of the photographs included in the book come from the author’s family archive, while others were taken by the author himself. Dating from 1955 to 2021, they depict a territory torn apart by constant war and the massacre of one people-nation by another: “Occupied Palestine” (as the artist’s mother, the granddaughter of Palestinians and Jordanians, calls it).
This dissociated juxtaposition of image and word ultimately reminds us that all language rests on the arbitrariness of the relationship between signified and signifier—what is said and how it is said. Within this framework, two pages stand out from the entire series created by Guendelman.
The first: a 1973 photograph of a family outing in the plaza of San José de Maipo, featuring a small camera paired with the phrase “Weapon of War,” attributing martial characteristics to the photograph itself; that analogy between the camera and the weapon inevitably refers to one of the aphorisms Susan Sontag put forward about photography: it is no coincidence that verbs alluding to the photographic act, including “capture” and “shoot,” carry a whiff of violence.
The second photograph was taken by the artist in Tel Aviv in 2017. In the upper section, the counter of a party supply store on Israel’s national holiday; in the lower section, a display case with 18 revolvers from the Israel Defense Forces Museum. Both images—the Israeli party supplies and the arsenal—are captioned with the phrase “Fun Camp.”
Rafael Guendelman materializes the conceptual triad of language, memory, and territory through the archive and photography. Returning to the possibility of a literature of the grandchildren, it becomes necessary to consider the historical trajectories brought into play—or the battlefield—throughout the visual narrative.
Historical trajectories accompanied by territorial displacements, which in turn account for the utopias and failures of those political projects, now experienced at the family level and documented in the book. *We Study and Write in Hebrew* can be read as the remake of a road movie spanning more than six decades between Chile and Israel, or also, as suggested by Claudio Guerrero’s texts, as a mockumentary. For some reason I still don’t know, the book contains images of the October 2019 uprising. The uprising of the grandchildren, which gave us the opportunity to turn our fictional literature into a documentary. It was too beautiful to be real. The rest, said Hamlet, is silence.