Dictatorial Violence The Body Politic And The Politics Of The Body Dismembering And Remembering In Chilean Literature Cinema And Public Spaces

Download or read book Dictatorial Violence, the Body Politic and the Politics of the Body: Dismembering and Remembering in Chilean Literature, Cinema and Public Spaces written by Chad Redwing and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A host of Chilean films, the fiction of Alberto Fuguet, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Isabel Allende and Jose Donoso, and hundreds of detention and torture centers that have been razed, abandoned or returned from the clandestine to serve as schools, stadiums, hotels and churches are all emblematic of this anti-statist, micro-political remembering. A photographic "topoanalysis" of torture centers reveals that much like palimpsests---ancient Roman wax-coated tablets that were inscribed, scraped and re-inscribed---the ethnographies of torture sites bleed through with horrific narratives that unsettle the dictator's historical project while suggesting geographically "housed" memories that cultivate unresolved mnemonic tensions. I conclude that today Chile contends with the legacy of authoritarianism primarily via a destape (a "socio-sexual uncorking"). By parading naked bodies and sexuality in public, individuals recall somatic tortures and demand future political transparency. In this way, contemporary culture has settled on a potent palimpsest---the layered meanings of flesh---yet, this destape also reveals that the dictator's neo-capitalism has triumphed as the body has become the primary object of consumptive pleasure.