Revista Enfoques (Dec 2006)
El Poder, los fantasmas y los cuerpos. Políticas corporales y subjetivación en la transición chilena
Abstract
This article examines the historic-political relationships of three distinct events that occurred in Chile during the democratic transition. The transfer of presidential power from a man to a woman, a photograph of men and women nudes in Santiago, and the scandal produced by the detention and the confessions of a successful businessman fond of holding sadomasochistic parties with minors. These three events are linked on the basis of the specificities of Pinochet’s dictatorship, understood as an enormous disciplinary apparatus of the bodies and the collectivities, and a dispositive creating a violent and agonistic erotica. Three terms overlap ¯bodies, ghosts and power¯ to create a working hypothesis: Chilean society, by means of certain body politics and exercise of power, has ceaselessly produced ghosts and specters still haunt it, that continue to ensnare and determine it.
