The purpose of this thesis is to analyse political memories, through the life stories of people who participated in political parties or movements during the time of Pinochet’s dictatorship. The analysis focuses on two aspects of activism which have usually been neglected, namely family and gender relations. Several questions were embraced along this research, around the central motivation of learning about the way in which people became politically active. What role family traditions and loyalties played? How gender has been constructed through political memories and political activism? And from a more historical point of view, how State terrorism during the Chilean dictatorship marked political militancy, both rightwing and leftwing, particularly for those who were defeated and suffered human rights violations? Methodological aspects determine the limits and richness of this work, based on memory narratives taken from interviews. Political identities are analysed through memory work, from the perspective of the ways in which people remember and construct their experiences of activism, through their own narratives. I examine how committed militants view their past participation, how they currently live their commitment, how they relate to the Chilean past, and how they construct their identities through the narrations of this particular and essential aspect of their lives. Political parties, particularly the leftwing, have been criticised because of their failure to stand as political referents and their inability to vindicate current struggles, to reflect new forms of exploitation and the lack of recognition for new social actors. Therefore, and taking the Chilean experience as an example, I also revise some reasons why ‘modern’ and western styles of militancy, in the last decades, may have become less popular. Finally, I would like to state that this research intended to stand as a space for the narratives of some Chilean political actors, to confront the official history of this painful period, a history that tends to forget that behind the facts that shocked Chile during the 1970s the protagonists were real and normal people, whose everyday life conditions drove them to live with a strong political commitment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629138 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Raposo-Quintana, P. |
| Publisher | Nottingham Trent University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/129/ |
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