Literary Genre, Monstruosity and Infrastructure: Notes on the Enciclopedia Chilena (1948-1971)

Abstract

The Enciclopedia Chilena, an ambitious publishing project that operated between 1948 and 1971 under the direction of Jorge Ugarte, sought to compile and systematize knowledge about Chile in various areas, with the support of the Congress. This work brought together a significant community of academics and professionals, generating a vast amount of documents and encyclopedic entries that today form part of its archive. However, the project faced criticism for its inefficiency and slowness, especially during the political changes of the 1960s, culminating in its closure in 1971. Despite its aspirations for modernization and national development, the Enciclopedia Chilena reveals the difficulty of articulating knowledge in an effective encyclopedic format, reflecting a crisis in the country's print culture. This study also addresses the relationship between literary criticism and the cultural infrastructure that sustained the project, suggesting that the Enciclopedia Chilena was not only an effort to compile knowledge, but also a manifestation of the tensions between development, knowledge and power in Chile.