650.1
Social Memories In South America: Generational Narratives In Times Of Political Youth Activism
Raimundo Frei (PhD Candidate)
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Given the recent, extensive political youth activism in Argentina and Chile, these two post-authoritarian countries provide fertile grounds in order to explore identity boundaries by those born after the dictatorships in the Southern Cone. Against this background, the main research questions are whether and how generational narratives have emerged in the context of political democratization.
Generational narratives link life course sequences with experiences of collective events. This connection must not be regarded in terms of Mannheim’s idea of ‘participation in the same destiny’. Rather, by sharing stories of a common past, people narrate a generational identity. Put briefly, generational narratives are attempts to bestow coherence and connect biography and history.
My analysis draws on sixty narrative interviews with people born in two different age-cohorts (1965-1974 and 1985-1994) in Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. It will show that whereas long-standing politics of memory in Argentina have created a discursive homogeneity and continuity between generations, the cycle of youth mobilization in Chile during 2006-2011 opened up the opportunity to create new narratives through collective remembering.
My analysis will thus illustrate how ordinary members of the respective society create (or not) generational identities by narrating past and present. That is, I will show that Argentina is an extraordinary social space to observe continuity between generations which risks perpetuating historical divisions, while the Chilean youth movement has contributed to shed light on the country’s undemocratic past.