Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Anchored in the Santiago General Cemetery, this essay analyses the management of revolutionary memory under neoliberalism. Juxtaposing the gravesites of Salvador Allende and VĂctor 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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