Emotions in the collective memory of the Chilean dictatorship

The memory of the Chilean dictatorship is a field of struggle of different ideological positions. Despite the efforts of the State for reconciliation among Chileans, differences in remembering and forgetting persist, because the meaning of the dictatorship for Chileans today is not a settled dispute. Memory, as a practice of making meaning of the past in the present, is also an affective practice. Recent theoretical trends in affect studies emphasize that affect is crucial in the activity of making meaning, so, memory is not a mere intellectual evaluation, but is an affective evaluation of the past in the present, anticipating future paths via imagination. In this paper, I will present some theoretical and methodological approaches based on my project, which may be useful to discuss the relations of memory and heritage.