Political Stigmas and Family Legacies

Abstract

This chapter describes how the politics of fear of the Other resulted in a stigmatization of left-wing activists. It sheds light on the way institutional discourses (e.g. religion, the military, and the executive power of the state) become entangled and woven together in everyday life, and how discursive ‘marks’ were transmitted within families whose legacies were inhabited by their children. It is in the inhabitation of legacies where the chapter traces forms of agency in the children of Pinochet through the concept of passing. Arguing against Goffman’s interactionist conception of ‘passing’ as a defence mechanism against stigmatization, this chapter suggests that the relationship to the family name is not something to avoid, clean, or conceal, but to inhabit, embody, and appropriate. It is contended that the focus on ‘passing’ overlooks that which does not want to pass in family political memories within the opposition. The latter, it is argued, points instead at the dilemmas of dealing with family legacies, involving affects, feelings of belonging, and forms of relatedness between generations.