Abstract

Building on an intertwined spatiotemporal weaving of reckoning-repairing-reworlding, this article analyses the constitutional process experienced in Chile between 2019-2023. Inspired by the sociology of image as a methodological tool and following a narrative that takes the shape of a spiral, we examine a series of photographs representing different layers in this ongoing process. In October 2019, the largest demonstrations in Chile's history sparked long-brewing demands for social and ecological transformation. The unsustainable pressure pushed political parties to call for a constitutional referendum where the population overwhelmingly voted to overturn the charter inherited from Augusto Pinochet's regime, and so the process of drafting a new text began. Following the rejection of two drafts, the constitutional process is, for now, closed. Yet, we claim that embracing a failure narrative is not only futile, but misleading, and we propose to see these events in terms of their potential for conceptualising and enacting transformative futures. Drawing on decolonial, anticolonial, and Indigenous scholarship, this essay focuses mainly on 2019's uprising and the first constitutional process (2021-2022) examining demands for Indigenous transformation – and the possibilities this case offers resistance movements elsewhere and “elsewhen.”