Abstract

GUGLIELMUCCI, Ana  and  MARQUEZ, Francisca. The power of ruins and memory: political violence, nation and commemoration in Colombia and Chile. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.45, n.2, pp.165-197.  Epub Jan 12, 2024. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v45n2/95237.

This article addresses how ruins and memory have the power to destabilize the national narrative in Colombia and Chile. Based on archives, photographs, and ethnographic fieldwork about the Palaces of Justice (Bogotá) and La Moneda (Santiago de Chile), the article analyzes the role of ruins and the rubble in the disputes about the interpretation of these events. The ruins of both Palaces are thought not only from the perspective of the destruction of material goods and human lives, but also from the situation caused by such catastrophe and loss. In this sense, they are understood in a physical sense, but also, and above all, in a historical-political, symbolic, and affective sense. The destruction caused by the ruin is thus considered for what it produces or enables due to the loss, as the foundation of new creations and political meanings associated with materiality and the space it occupies, both in the urban fabric and in the public debate. Thus, the ruins remain and, like specters, they are always a way of appearing and, by the way, of interrogating and questioning. The ruins open up the possibility of remembering by inscribing the experience in a materiality where we can still recognize what happened, and function as nodes where the fissures of a wounded memory are expressed. The study of the ruins of political violence and its images allow, therefore, to analyze how "memo-landscapes" are configured, understood as a social terrain where battles are waged to remember publicly. The main hypothesis is that these two edifications have a materiality that enables the political performance of emotions as pain, as well as the political achievement of collective grief and the search for justice about the past.

Keywords : Chile; Colombia; memory; nation; political violence; ruin.

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