Diasporic constellations: The Chilean exile diaspora space as a multidirectional landscape of memory

Abstract

Engaging with debates about the future of the discipline of memory studies, this essay explores recent calls to pay attention to ‘transnational discourses’ of cultural memory, in this case how the diaspora space forged by the presence of Chilean exiles living in the United Kingdom has produced new mobile memory landscapes for remembering and commemorating the afterlife of the dictatorship (1973–1990) beyond the confines of the field of the ‘politics of memory’ in the Southern Cone. In particular, it discusses how the second-generation Chilean narratives presented here reflect both the locational and multisited formations of the diaspora space.creating multidirectional linkages with various histories of trauma that connectthe dictatorial past of the previous generation, with new transformative experiences of political activism.