Neoliberal transitions: the Santiago general cemetery and the affective economies of counter-revolution |
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Authors: | Tamara Lea Spira |
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Institution: | 1. Women’s and Gender Studies Department, University of Oregon, 315 Hendricks Hall, Eugene, OR 97403, USAtamara.lea.spira@gmail.com |
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Abstract: | Anchored in the Santiago General Cemetery, this essay analyses the management of revolutionary memory under neoliberalism. Juxtaposing the gravesites of Salvador Allende and Víctor Jara, I theorise the gendered and racialised processes through which collective dreams for justice – and even radical politics themselves – come to be co-opted under neoliberal capitalism. If in Jara’s grave we see the state performing the part of the hyper-masculine disciplinarian father, I argue, in Allende’s grave we witness the state as the begrudgingly accepting father, ready to take in the repentant children back into the nation, in exchange for obedience. Finally, I turn to alternative memorialisation practices performed by the nation’s discontents, and namely ongoing struggles for collective self-determination and decolonisation. Ultimately, I situate critiques of neoliberalism in Chile in dialogue with intersectional queer and transnational feminist scholarship on the seductive logics of neoliberalism – and emergent forms of justice that appear just beyond its purview. |
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Keywords: | (counter)revolution memory affective economies violence and justice Chile |
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