Juana Lucero as reader: Print Culture, knowledge and gaze

Abstract

This paper analyzes Juana Lucero, main character of Augusto D’Halmar’s irst novel (1902), as a reader of print materials who builds on her subjectivity from a daily appropriation of images and words. In this context, Juana reveals an increasing sensitivity towards visual languages and interacts with various cultural artifacts which gained notoriety in Santiago urban space at the in de siècle. Therefore, Juana Lucero’s daily life is embedded in new forms of material culture thanks to the rise of new technologies and modernizing impulses led by Chilean cultural elites. In this sense, Juana Lucero reading practices inform a kind of knowledge which spreads beyond lettered and sanitary control among popular women in everyday social spaces.