^{Pía Montalva is a designer (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies (Universidad de Chile), as well as a professor at the History Institute of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the author of the books Morir un poco: Moda y sociedad en Chile 1960-1976 (2004), Tejidos Blandos: Indumentaria y violencia política en Chile 1973-1990 (2013), and Apuntes para un diccionario de la moda (2017). She has curated multiple clothing exhibitions and fashion shows and collaborated as a specialized columnist in Chilean media.}

 

Introduction

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean Armed Forces, who were deployed throughout the country, carried out a coup d'état, overthrowing the constitutional government of President Salvador Allende, and taking control of political power by forcefully and effectively repressing the supporters of the Unidad Popular. A military dictatorship that would last for the next 17 years was installed, marshaling in a new political, institutional, and economic order based on the use of violence in the country. The military dictatorship was to be the mechanism through which changes were set in motion that would radically affect the future of Chilean society, and key projects associated with the regime's re-foundational purpose (such as the establishment of the new neoliberal economic model at the end of 1975, and the enactment of the new Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile in 1981) were implemented through undemocratic means.

In the sphere of everyday life, state violence was presented as the device through which the dictatorship remodels the bodies of its opponents, intervening directly in their materiality through force and removing public space. Illegal arrests, executions, disappearances, imprisonment, and torture, often resulting in death, relegation, or exile, were some of the actions that took place systematically, and with greater or lesser civilian resistance and/or armed resistance, until 1990.

Beyond its ongoing pervasiveness and purpose, which was defined largely by the postulates of the National Security Doctrine, the ways in which violence was managed and administered (where, how, and when) were gradually modified in accordance with the legal frameworks in force, which served as a shield for the regime to justify its actions. [1] It was also influenced by the nuances of neoliberal ideology and the free market model from 1976 onwards (specialization, intensity, selectivity, regularity, efficiency) and by pressure from opposition groups and the international community which, although it did not eradicate it, did partly define its visibility and invisibility.

Body, clothing, and political violence

The links between state political violence and clothing is evident when analyzing the testimonies of people affected by it. This connection between state political violence and clothing has mainly been dealt with in forensic work that aims to identify the remains of the disappeared or establish cause of death. To a large extent, naked bodies and bony assemblages devoid of soft tissue define the imaginary of the body abused during the Chilean military dictatorship. However, it is the dressed-undressed body that best exposes the different forms of political violence exercised during this period. Because clothing, in whatever condition, and to the extent that it touches or covers, totally or partially, the body, refers to a subject with a name and a surname, a history, a time, a place, an identity, a voice, an autobiographical account. Leonor Arfuchs suggests that subjects are inscribed in a biographical space that involves the historical, political, social, and cultural context, and where each person produces their own narrative as a way of structuring life and identity. [2] From the above approach, I suggest that clothing is a key signifier in this process of inscription, because it is not limited to spoken or written language.

In the same line of analysis, I propose that the body and clothing do not operate, in practice, as separate entities. They compose a single materiality, in a permanent state of constitution, because subjects use clothes and accessories to produce and voluntarily replicate different body styles — and autobiographical narratives — throughout their existence, which they modify or sustain according to the life experiences and historical contexts in which they occur. Although these bodily styles are regulated by hegemonic norms related to gender, sex, class or race — even fashion — they need to be reiterated in order to assert their presence and be recognized as such. In this sense, the performance through embodied practices, proposed by Judith Butler  as a way of fixing and performing gender, unstable by definition, would help to explain other dimensions of the autobiographical narrative: its configuration through dressed bodies but also the possibility of fracturing it by remodeling those bodies through exercising political violence. [3]

In everyday life, clothing satisfies functional (physical and symbolic protection, shelter, hygiene, modesty), aesthetic (adornment), and social (integration, differentiation, distinction, categorization) needs that determine the appearance and actions of the clothed body in public space. Joanne Entwistle argues that fashion and dress studies overlook the body and vice versa. [4] For analytical purposes, she proposes the concept of contextualized bodily practice, which would make it possible to consider both the discursive and representational aspects of dress and its inclusion in the framework of power relations and corporeal experience in social space. Djurdja Barlett agrees with Entwistle in defining fashion as an embodied social practice. She stresses its performative aspect, its links to the advance of Western capitalism and its possibilities of highlighting — and resisting — “the totalitarian, nationalistic and extreme religious spaces on the world map,” thus affirming its political dimension. [5] Both assign a key role to the historical context in which these practices take place.