Development, nation and "official futures": The case of the rhetoric of progress in contemporary Chile

This presentation is an attempt to conceptualise, with the aid of various sources that stem from the social sciences and philosophy, the way in which different ways to imagine the shape of time are implicit in Chilean official political rhetoric and how these may affect the way in which we perceive the past, what we understand as possible in the present and the possibilities that the future can bring. Using as examples the way in which some of the most important recent political events in Chile are narrated in the official rhetoric, we endeavour ourselves to unravel the form in which a certain discourse about the Nation, about its past and its identity is related with a form of projecting the future and, in practice, a mode of understanding the political map and the different forces in the present. Likewise, it is an attempt to give an account of the different discursive forms in which the destiny of the Nation and the everyday experience of its inhabitants are woven together, through a narrative in which the risks and sacrifices made in the present are necessary for future development, and how the past is thus interpreted as a plot with a mission. That is, how the uncertainty of the present, the crises it has to face and individual experiences are connected with the idea of its mission to become a developed country, thus reducing contingency in an ever more uncertain world. Finally, a debate on the tensions that this model for "national time" ensues, one of which is the growing political pressures and scissions that are beggining to arise in a country that is growing steadily.