Social Movements as Triggers of Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma and Memory in Chile
-
Université catholique de Louvain
Belgium -
Université Paris 8, Vincennes - Saint-Denis France
-
Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université catholique de Louvain Belgium
-
Universidad de Los Lagos Chile
Abstract
This article explores the role of social movements in transmitting collective memory and trauma produced by the dictatorship across generations in Chile. It argues that, beyond civil society organisations focused on human rights, broader social movements, such as student, feminist, and anti-neoliberal protests, play a crucial role in uncovering and processing the trauma of past state violence. Using qualitative research and combining insights from social movement studies, social psychology, and psychoanalysis, we show how these movements produce spaces and situations where conscious and unconscious trauma originating in state political violence is unveiled, transmitted to the next generation, and in some cases, re-elaborated. The article also highlights the gendered dimension of memory, mainly through the experiences of women survivors of sexual political violence, who fought for official recognition of these crimes as distinct from torture. Social movements facilitate the articulation of these silenced histories, fostering intergenerational dialogue. Ultimately, the study underscores how Chilean society remains shaped by dictatorship-era violence, with social movements playing a vital role in confronting historical silences and shaping collective memory.
Except where otherwise noted, content in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Downloads
Author Biographies
Karla Henríquez holds a doctorate in American Studies and has a background in sociological social psychology. Her research focuses on activism, social movements, and youth, with an emphasis on processes of subjectivation and emotions within Latin American contexts. She is a scientific collaborator at the Catholic University of Louvain and elected board member of Research Committee 42 of Social Psychology at the International Sociological Association. Her recent projects include Grassroots and Institutionalism: Opportunities and Challenges in the Current Democratic Tension in Chile and Ecuador (CLACSO) and Memory and Resistance in Women Actors of Society: Mournful Lives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (Wallonie-Bruxelles International). She has coordinated books such as Chile en Movimientos (2023 with Geoffrey Pleyers), El despertar chileno: revuelta y subjetividad política (2022, CLACSO with Rodrido Ganter, Raúl Zarzuri and Ximena Goecke), and Juventud y Pandemia: Reflexiones, Investigaciones y Propuestas (2023, Ariadna).
Nicolás Pinochet-Mendoza is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and holds a PhD in Psychoanalysis from Universidad Andrés Bello. He is currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis and at the Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les Logiques Contemporaines de la Philosophie (LLCP). He is a member of the founding team at the Centro de Investigación y Tratamiento de la Infancia con Problemas Aperturas Clínicas. He teaches graduate courses at the Universidad Austral de Chile and works as a collaborating professor at the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano. His research interests include memory, mourning, human rights, childhood, political philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He has published in indexed journals and is co-editor of the book Les risques de l’oubli (L’Harmattan, 2025).
BelgiumGeoffrey Pleyers is a FNRS Research Director and Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He is the current President of the International Sociological Association. His research focuses on global studies, social movements, youth, sociology of religion and Latin America. He is the author of “Alter-Globalization. Becoming Actors in the Global Age” (Polity, 2011) and “El cambio nunca es lineal” (“Change is never linear”, CLACSO, 2024) and the editor of 21 books or journal issues, including “Social Movements and Politics in the Pandemic” (with Breno Bringel, Bristol UP, 2022) and, with Karla Henríquez, “Chile en movimientos” (CLACSO, 2023). Recent articles in English include “The pandemic is a battlefield. Social movements during the COVID-19 lockdown” (Journal of Civil Society, 2020); “For a global sociology of social movements. Beyond methodological globalism” (Globalizations, 2024) and a series of articles on the renewal of global sociology published in Global Dialogue.
Fedra Cuestas is a professor at the University of Los Lagos, Chile. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris 8, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship. She is co-researcher of the project Memory and Resistance in Women Actors of Society: Mournful Lives of Victims of Human Rights Violations (RI10), a collaboration between Chile and the Walloon-Brussels Region, AGCID (2023–2025). Her recent publications include Una memoria sin testamento: Pensar los nuevos escenarios en los tiempos del recuerdo (RIL - Ed. U. de Los Lagos, 2020), Une mémoire sans testament: l'après-coup des dictatures militaires en Amérique Latine (Ed. l'Harmattan, 2019), Una memoria sin testamento: Dilemas de la sociedad Latinoamericana posdictadura (LOM, 2016), and Violencias contemporáneas: Entre traumatismos, memorias y horizontes subjetivos (Ed. Universitarias de Valparaíso, 2019), co-authored with Daniel Jofré.