Space, Body-Subject, Technology: The Construction of the Myth of Chile’s History in the Work of Jorge Baradit

Abstract

In this paper, it is proposed that Jorge Baradit’s work is a device that processes fragments of subject-body, space and technology to construct the myth of the history of Chile. In its operation, this machine turns the country into a body and the body into space, and uses them as pieces that make up violent technologies of domination that enslave subjects, putting them at the service of unknown powers based on superior and evil interests. Here, the notion of time is malleable, and words are magical because they affect the real. In this way, a “secret history” is being built in which, among other episodes, the conquest of America, the coup d’état of 1973 and the Pinochet dictatorship are recounted, a mythical history that participates in the creation of the social imaginary of late capitalism as it is configured today in Latin America.