Paradoxes of Erasure: Palestinian Memory and the Politics of Forgetting in Post-Dictatorship Chile

Abstract

In this essay I explore the relationship between diasporic Palestinian memory and the politics of forgetting in post-dictatorship Chile. Drawing on ethnographic material from long-term fieldwork in Santiago, I argue that dual processes of remembrance and forgetting are central to a diasporic Palestinian politics that hinges on ideas of resistance and that always refers to the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people, but that is also located within something of a memory void with regards to the recent Chilean past. The essay points to the paradoxical ways in which Palestinian-Chilean remembrance aiming to counter attempts at negation and erasure elsewhere often entails a compliance with the symbolic violence of a wider-reaching politics of oblivion in the Chilean era of post-dictatorship. By taking such an approach, I seek to nuance our understanding of the political dynamics of memory and to highlight the analytical potential in approaching diasporic practices at the intersection between local context and transnational points of reference.