Abstract
This chapter introduces the rationale of the book. It shows how the persistence of the political and social events of the past decades in the imaginaries of Chileans draws attention to the afterlife of violence. By using this concept, it is argued that far from reaching closure after the transition, memories of past atrocities haunt the present and are remade and revisited by new generations. In this context, the relationship between family generations, cultures, and memories is discussed. While agreeing with the importance of denaturalizing the family, this book, however, defends the focus on the family as a site for memory production which is characterized by ‘relatedness’ and which also bridges various forms of private and public forms of remembrance and identity constructions. My argument is that the dynamics of memory transmission, the family patterns of relatedness, and even the gendered patterns of mourning illuminate the specificity of the afterlife of violence in Chile, the transmission of political memory within the families, and its postmemory (specifically the circulation of mediated forms of remembrance within cultural memory).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Achúgar, H. (2003). El lugar de la memoria a propósito de monumentos (Motivos y Paréntesis). In E. En Jelin & V. Langland (Eds.), Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores-Siglo Veintiuno de Argentina.
Assmann, A. (2006a). Limits of understanding: Generational identities in recent Germany memory literature. In Cohen-Pfister, L & Wenroeder-Skinner, D.Victims and perpetrators 1933-1945. (Re)Presenting the Past in Post-Unification Culture. (pp. 29–48). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Assmann, J. (2008). Communicative and Cultural Memory. In Erll, A. and Nunning, A. 2008. Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, 109–118. Berlin:Walter de Gruyter.
Avelar, I. (1999). The untimely present: Postdictatorial Latin American fiction and the task of mourning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Booth, W. J. (2006). Communities of memory: On witness, identity, and justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Butler, J. (2003). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso.
Carsten, J. (2007). Ghosts of memory: Essays on remembrance and relatedness. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Collins, C., Hite, K., & Joignont A. (2013a). The politics of memory in Chile: From Pinochet to Bachelet. Boulder CO: FirstForumPress.
Collins, C. (2013b). The Politics of Prosecution. In Collins, C.; Hite, K. & Joignant, A. (2013a). The Politics of Memory in Chile. From Pinochet to Bachelet. Boulder CO: FirstForumPress.
Constable, P., & Valenzuela, A. (1993). A nation of enemies: Chile under Pinochet. New York: W.W. Norton.
Crenzel, E. (2011). Introduction. Present pasts: Memory (ies) of state terrorism in the Southern Cone of Latin America. In F. Lessa & V. Druliolle (Eds.), The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Das, V. (2007). Life and words: Violence and the descent into the ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
De la Parra, M. (1998). La mala memoria: Historia personal de Chile contemporáneo. Santiago: Planeta.
Garretón, M. A. (1992). Fear in military regimes. An overview. In Corradi, J.; Weiss Fagen, P. & Garretón, M. (1992) Fear at the edge. State terror and resistance in Latin America (pp. 13–25). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goffman, E. (1986). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Gómez-Barris, M. (2009). Where memory dwells: Culture and state violence in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gordon, A. (2008). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Green, L (1999): Fear as A Way of Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gudehus, C. (2013). Remembering WWII in Europe—Structures of remembrance. In E. Langenbacher, B. Niven, & R. Wittlinger (Eds.), Dynamics of memory and identity in contemporary Europe. New York: Bergham.
Hirsch, M. (1997). Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory. Harvard University Press.
Hirsch, M. (2001). Surviving images: Holocaust photographs and the work of postmemory. The Yale Journal of Criticism, 14(1), 5–37.
Hirsch, M. (2008). The generation of postmemory. Poetics Today, 29(1), 103–128.
Hirsch, M., & Smith, V. (2002). Feminism and cultural memory: An introduction. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(1), 1–19.
Hohenlohe, A. (2011). In the presence of the past: ‘Third Generation’ Germans and the cultural memory of national socialism and the holocaust. PhD Thesis, Goldsmiths College, London.
Huyssen, A. (2003). Present pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jara, D. (2012). The aftermath of violence: The post-coup second generation in Chile. In Boesen, E.; Lentz, F; Margue, M. Scuto, D & Wagener, R. (2012). Peripheral Memories. Bielefeld:transcript-verlag.
Kaiser, S. (2003, March 23–25). What happened? vs. Why it happened? Young Argentineans remember terror. Paper delivered at the Conference Culture and Peace: Violence, Politics, and Representation in the Americas. University of Texas at Austin.
Kaiser, S. (2005). Postmemories of terror: A new generation copes with the legacy of the “Dirty War”. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
LaCapra, D. (2001). Writing history, writing trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Landsberg, A. (2013). Prosthetic memory: The transformation of American remembrance in the age of mass culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lazzara, M. J. (2006). Polyphonic memories: Pinochet’s dictatorship in the collective imagination. A Contra Corriente, 4(1), 191–205.
Lazzara, M. J. (2007). Memory and scripts in the making: Chile’s 9/11 and the struggle for meaning. A Contra Corriente, 55(1), 243–252.
Lazzara, M. (2009a). Neoliberalism and Chile’s Public Imagination. A Contra Corriente 6 (3), 272–279.
Lazzara, M. J. (2009b). Filming loss (post-) memory, subjectivity, and the performance of failure in recent argentine documentary films. Latin American Perspectives 3, 36(5), 147–157.
Lazzara, M. J. (2011). Charting the emergence of a ‘Culture of human rights: The Chilean transition and the ‘Memory Question’. A Contra Corriente, 8(2), 342–356.
Lechner, N. (1992). Some people die of fear: Fear as a political problem. In J. Corradi, P. Weiss, & M. A. Garretón (Eds.), Fear at the edge. State terror and resistance in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lira, E., & Castillo, M. I. (1993). Trauma Político y Memoria Social. Psicología Política, 6, 95–116.
Lira, E. (2011). Dilemmas of memory. In F. Lessa & V. Druliolle (Eds.), The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martín-Baró, I. (1988). From dirty war to psychological war: The case of El Salvador. In A. Aron (Ed.), Flight, exile and return: Mental health and the refugee. San Francisco: CHRICA.
Martín-Baró, I. (1998). La violencia política y la guerra como causas del trauma psicosocial en El Salvador. Revista de Psicología de El Salvador, 7(28), 123–141.
Miller, R. (2007). Researching Life Stories and Family Histories. London: SAGE.
Moon, C. (2006). Narrating political reconciliation in South Africa. Social & Legal Studies, 15(2), 257–275.
Moulian, T. (2002). Chile actual: Anatomía de un mito. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.
Olick, J. K., Vinitzky-Seroussi, V., & Levy, D. (2011). The collective memory reader. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pérez, M. (2012). Diario de una Princesa Montonera. 110% Verdad. Capital Intelectual: Buenos Aires.
Pérotin-Dumon, Anne, “El pasado vivo de Chile en el año del Informe sobre la Tortura. Apuntes de una historiadora”, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, Paris, 23/05/2005, http://nuevomundo.revues.org/954
Pérotin-Dummon, A. (2007). Historizar El Pasado Vivo. Santiago: Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Plummer, K. (2001). Documents of life 2: An invitation to a critical humanism. London: SAGE Publications.
Roht-Arriaza, N. (2001). The Pinochet precedent and universal jurisdiction. New England Law Review, 35, 2.
Roht-Arriaza, N. (2005). The Pinochet effect. Transnational justice in the age of human rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rosenthal, G. (1998). The Holocaust in Three Generations: Families of Victims and Perpetrators of the Nazi Regime. London [England]; Washington: Cassell.
———. (2010). The Holocaust in Three Generations: Families of Victims and Perpetrators of the Nazi Regime. Barbara Budrich.
Rotella, S., & Arana, A. (2012). Finding Oscar. Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala. Propublica: New York
Santner, E. (1993). Stranded objects: Mourning, memory, and film in postwar Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Sarlo, B. (2005). Tiempo pasado: cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo: una discusión. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina.
Seidler, V. J. (2010). Embodying identities: Culture, differences and social theory. Bristol: Policy Press.
Serpente, A. (2011). The traces of ‘postmemory’ in second-generation Chilean and Argentinian identities. In F. Lessa & V. Druliolle (Eds.), The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smart, C. (2007). Personal life. Cambridge: Polity.
Sosa, C. (2011). Queering acts of mourning in the aftermath’s of Argentina’s dictatorship: The mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Los Rubios. In F. Lessa & V. Druliolle (Eds.), The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stern, S. J. (2006a). Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988. Durham: Duke University Press.
Stern, S. J. (2006b). Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the eve of London, 1998. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Weine, S. (2006). Testimony after catastrophe: Narrating the traumas of political violence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Welzer, H. (2008). Communicative memory. In A. Erll (Ed.), Cultural memory studies. An international and interdisciplinary handbook (pp. 285–298). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Wilde, A. (2013). A season of memory: Human rights in Chile’s long transition. In Collins, C., Hite, K., & Joignont, A. The politics of memory in Chile. From Pinochet to Bachelet. Boulder, CO: FirstForumPress.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jara, D. (2016). When the Past Matters. In: Children and the Afterlife of State Violence. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56328-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56328-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-94852-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56328-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)