Abstract
This chapter describes the historical and social conditions that shape cultures of fear. Highlighting the pervasiveness of state violence, the chapter reflects on what an encounter with state violence meant for the children of Pinochet era and how it has left traces in the landscapes of intersubjective life until today. In this chapter, I show how the politics of fear promoted by Pinochet’s regime through state terror was accompanied by an increasing fear of the Other which permeated social life in post-coup Chile and helped to shape the family as a place invested of feelings of loyalty and tension, in the face of a threatening Other. I present one of the several paradoxes attached to cultures of fear and the complexity of its experiences: at the same time as the culture of fear dispossess individuals of their sense of dignity, the presence of fear or the sense of threat is normalized and absorbed into forms of everyday life.
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Jara, D. (2016). The Culture of Fear and Its Afterlife. 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_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56328-6_2
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