Bodies: from disappearance to the memory

Authors

  • Juan Pablo Sánchez Sepúlveda Universidad de Chile

Abstract

Disappearance was a distinctive act of Latin American dictatorships during the 1970s. Through them, the body became a space where political repression was executed. For this reason, the following essay intends to search for the role that the body represents in enforced disappearance and the building of memorials. Likewise, it seeks to understand the connection between body and memorial through the representation, and how this affects in building the memory of a nation. In order to conduct the previous statements, the notion of body will be briefly described. From this, the concepts of memorial and disappearance will be developed. In each of these concepts, the existing connection with the body of the “detained-disappeared” during the Chilean dictatorship will be identified. Finally, this essay concludes that memorials are a device that allows the extension of the meaning behind the body; they are the aesthetic-political resistance to the dictatorship which takes place in our times. It is also concluded that both body and disappearance are related in an exclusive inclusion (Agamben, 1998), where survival of the one and exclusion of the other is disputed between them in order to be fulfilled.

Keywords:

Bodies – disappearance – memorial – representation – memory

Author Biography

Juan Pablo Sánchez Sepúlveda, Universidad de Chile

Lic. en Ciencias Políticas, Universidad Diego Portales. Estudiante del Magister en Comunicación política, Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen, Universidad de Chile