Abstract

This article examines a profound turn in the commemoration and representations of the dictatorial past in Chile (1973-1990), where young people who did not experience firsthand the authoritarian order are publicly creating fleeting images, practices, and objects to remember the military dictatorship. These are urban ephemeral and ludic mnemonic assemblages (Freeman, Nienass, and Daniell 2015) that connect past and present events and demand new ways of talking, acting, and thinking about the past, thereby appropriating the public space. The participants in these actions stress the original, carnivalesque, and public dimensions of their practices, challenging the official politics of memory that has focused on the recognition of victims within the walls of museums or memorials. The following question guides this article: How do new public, ludic, and ephemeral strategies interact with and potentially change official ways of narrating the past? How do they create the space for political participation in postconflict societies? Drawing upon a qualitative and multimethod study that combines 60 in-depth interviews, participant observations, and archival work, I maintain that, although this blossoming of the Chilean public memory has opened up new territories for activating memory, it has a transient temporality and, consequently, may have transitory political potential.