Political Technologies of Memory: transpositions and innovations in human rights violations documentation in Chile

• In Event: The technologies of memory in post-dictatorial societies

Abstract

During civil conflict and at times of state terrorism, people around the world are executed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons. Registration of human rights violations is essential to face such atrocities and seek justice, truth, reparation, memory, and non-repetition measures that strengthen the rule of law and democracy.

In general, the documentation of memory and human rights archives has been valued for the information it contains, leaving aside the question of how it was produced and organised, which technologies, techniques and epistemic frameworks were employed and how registration of atrocities develop over time. During the past three years, our interdisciplinary team—in close relation with human rights advocacy organisations—has analysed the paradigmatic case of the documentation of human rights violations perpetrated by Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile and its uses and effects after the military regime’s fall.

Though archival research, this paper analyses how the documentation produced by human rights civil society organisations which provided assistance and legal defense to victims during the entire dictatorship, has been used by transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions and in memory sites. We call political technologies of memory the documentation artefacts that are appropriated in contexts and moments other than those which originated them. Covering more than four decades, the paper aims at identifying the transpositions, silences, and innovations between these three processes of human righths violations registry in Chile.

Author

• Oriana M Bernasconi, Universidad Alberto Hurtado