Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Margarita Palacios
School of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HX, UK.
Abstract The military coup of 1973 is the most important event in Chilean
history of the 20th century. Thus far it has been explained only in political and
economic terms, and, therefore, violence has been understood as strategic.
Understanding the cruelty, indiscriminate torture and body mutilations of the
coup, however, requires a different analytical perspective. On the basis of a
discourse analysis of the Chilean press during the years that preceded the coup,
and using the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy, I put forth a psychosocial inter-
pretation in which subjectivity, desire and the limits of the social are central.
My research has led me to conclude that anti-Communism and the violence
that followed the coup, more than expressing a political and economic conflict,
condensed a deeper dynamic of fear and hatred: fear of social disintegration –
associated with the feminization of Chilean society – and hatred of the disavowed
aspects of Chilean identity. The brutality of the violence aimed not only to repress
left-wing political activists, but also to ‘extirpate from the Chilean soul’ a devil
that was destroying the nation, to punish a society for having allowed this to
happen, and to restore a patriarchal social order.
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2011) 16, 244–260. doi:10.1057/pcs.2010.21;
published online 28 July 2011
Villa Grimaldi, the National Stadium, and Colonia Dignidad were only three
of the 1,132 detention centers established throughout the country after the
military coup in Chile. The Chilean democratic tradition had vanished
behind an immense repressive apparatus that kept the country captive until
1990. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its follow-up body, the
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs/
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 245
Palacios
246 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
Studies of public violence that emphasize either the state and the rational
organization of collective action (Tilly, 1979) or the psychological factors
related to social structural transformations (Dollard et al, 1939; Smelser, 1962;
Gurr, 1970) allow us to understand only partially the phenomenon of violence;
as the analysis of the Chilean case shows, neither frustration nor rationality
alone can account for the violence that emerged after the coup. Studies of
violence undertaken from a cultural perspective (Poole, 1994; Swider, 1995;
Wood, 2003), on the other hand, permit a better grasp of the complexity of
the phenomenon while considering many of the variables related to violence
(such as the subjective process that accompanies it and the power relations that
are at play). Most of the time, however, such accounts tend to be ethnographic
and therefore do not offer a theoretical argument in which all the elements
present in the expression of collective violence are integrated and explained.
Most important, their analysis leaves out the dimension of desire and
enjoyment, which I find crucial for understanding the hatred that characterizes
violence.
The lack of a comprehensive theory of violence is related to the fact that,
except in Durkheim (1893, 1912), social theory has not conceptualized radical
otherness as a basic component of social life (Palacios, 2004). The radical other
is not the ‘different other’ with whom understanding and reciprocity is possible,
but the unreachable other, the other with whom there is no communication, the
other that threatens the very existence of the self. This lack of conceptualization
of the radical other has meant a poor understanding of the relation of the enmity
that characterizes violence. In my view, only by analyzing the relation between
the (violent) self and the (enemy) other can we understand what violence is
about. Although understanding the relation between the self and the other has
been at the very center of social theory, otherness has been conceptualized so far
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 247
Palacios
248 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
primary constitution of the self and in the relation between the self and the other
allows us to go beyond the concept of meaning and rationality (and therefore to
move analytically beyond the purely cultural or strategic approaches described
earlier) and accept the notion of a decentered subject whose motivations for
action are not only conscious and preconscious but also unconscious.
According to this view, the self is not closed in on itself but, from its very
beginning, is given to the Other. Whereas in a purely Foucauldian, post-
structuralist perspective the psychoanalytic subject ‘belongs’ to the Other
(ie, discourse), however, here the subject keeps its unconscious as the space of
resistance (Žižek, 1989).
Taking a perspective different from the one used by crowd behavior theorists,
I want to recover the nonrational/nonsocial (neither strategic nor learned)
component of violence and discover its internal logic and meaning. I do so by
using the Lacanian notion of fantasy as presented in the work of Žižek (1989,
1997). Fantasy plays a crucial role in the constitution of social identity
and it functions to dissolve the existing dichotomy in the literature of violence:
meaning/rationality versus irrationality. Fantasy provides identity with a tran-
scendental narrative: an idea of wholeness that conceals the inconsistency – and
arbitrariness – of the formation of the social and contributes to the stability of a
particular system of meaning. The transcendental narrative about identity is
also a narrative about the apparent cause of its instability; a narrative about a
pernicious other is also constructed. Now, as noted previously, the relation self–
other is also a libidinal relation, and therefore antagonism is experienced as a
relation of ‘aggressive jealousy’, in which the other is accused of ‘stealing
enjoyment from the self’.
Chilean scholars have recognized the central role of the press during the period
1970–73 in the creation of Chilean public opinion and of counterpublics in
general (Sunkel, 1983; Reyes et al, 1989; Duran, 1995). The press aided the
construction of a rational public sphere, and it certainly both expressed the
existing level of anxiety and psychological regression of the population and
became a fundamental element in the reproduction and increase of such anxiety
(Duran, 1995).
Using Sunkel’s (1983) distinction between ‘enlightened’ newspapers (those
which understand rationality as a means of mutual understanding and progress
as a goal of history), and ‘symbolic-dramatic’ newspapers (those which reject
rationality, use concrete rather than abstract language, and are based on
religious conceptions of the world), I analyzed one newspaper for each genre:
El Mercurio (for the first one) and Tribuna (for the second). El Mercurio is the
oldest Chilean newspaper (founded in 1900), and its target is an enlightened
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 249
Palacios
Chilean public. The newspaper Tribuna, on the other hand, was the expression
of the radicalized Right-wing, whose aim with the newspaper was to ‘fight
Communism, the enemy of Chile’. Though this newspaper existed for only two
years (1972–1973), it was a major part of the news media during the socialist
government.
Although the press is usually considered to be a medium for propaganda
(the rational-strategic action of individuals in pursuit of a political goal through
the use of media), I selected press coverage of the electoral campaigns as my
focus of analysis because it seemed to be a good medium through which to
analyze fantasies. According to Kristeva (1980, 1984), the signifying process
involves both symbolic and semiotic-chora modalities. The first refers to
signification and presupposes a constituted-conscious subject. The second refers
to the articulation of drives and presupposes a decentered subject. According
to Kristeva, the symbolic and semiotic are always present in language,
and the dialectic between them determines the type of discourse involved
(poetry, science, narrative, etc). The polymorphous character of the press (the
amalgamation of genres, such as news, pictures, editorials, headlines, cartoons)
seems to combine both symbolic and semiotic modalities neatly. The press not
only provides the open and strategic position of the Right-wing and its political
culture (its wider symbolic framework), but also allows us to read between the
lines about how the Right constructs its fantasies about the left.
How to read fantasies? The dual nature of fantasy (ie, its relation to meaning
and its relation to enjoyment) is expressed discursively in two kinds of
elements: one, clearly discursive and always outspoken, characterized by the
moral justification of violence; the other, more hidden but still present in the
relation with the other, characterized by the experience of enjoyment. These
two elements, morality and enjoyment, I submit, are articulated in four
dimensions of fantasy, two discursive and two libidinal: universality and radical
antagonism, sexuality and hate.
Universality
250 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
The Chilean people want to continue with their regime of freedom, for
which they have struggled for 160 years. They want freedom of thought,
and the freedom to share ideas and to gather in organizations to be
maintained and defended, and they want this freedom to grow and
improve still more. y It is a fact that fear has taken over in Chilean
families. There is fear of sudden changes, of mistakes, of unemployment.
Fear of dictatorship, of compulsive indoctrination, of the loss of the
nation’s moral and spiritual heritage. (p. 25)
Though the political Right always claimed to be apolitical (precisely because its
claims were universal), in 1973 their discourse was radicalized and the major
clash shifted to ‘evil politics versus upright military’. Indeed, one of the elements
present in the Right-wing campaign against the socialist government was the
call for the military to intervene and save Chile from the chaos that was
dominating it. Authority versus anomie and morality versus base passions were
the main elements of the promilitary discourse. Discursive devices that were
prominent in the military regime post-1973 were already present in the 1973
parliamentary election.
Radical antagonism
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 251
Palacios
reform and guerrilla movements in neighboring countries) made the Right ‘deaf’
to the words of the Left. Any form of dialogue or understanding and, more
important, the trust necessary to communicate with each other had already
vanished. The legalism that the socialist government promulgated (the ‘Chilean
way to socialism’) and the actual constitutional guarantees that President
Allende was requested to sign before he could be nominated head of state,
meant nothing to the Right, who considered everything a ‘lie’.
Here are some examples:
Mr. Allende, you have declared yourself to be a Marxist. But for Marxism,
art must be at the service of its people, and fulfilling this doctrine, it has
imprisoned, killed painters, writers, composers, etc. because they have
expressed freely their ideas in those countries dominated by Communism.
So why do you say that if you become president you will respect artistic
and cultural creation?
The political parties that form the coalition that expects to govern the
country (Popular Unity) have repeated that they have no intention of
constructing a Marxist regime, but a political combination where
ideological plurality will be fundamental. y Though the socialist political
leaders might have the best intention of keeping freedom alive, they will
end up restricting it, or suppressing it, because their vocation is
totalitarian. They aim to eliminate the ideas that obstruct or make it
difficult to achieve their political purposes.
252 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
Each day the murderous callousness of the UP becomes clearer and more
terrifying. The examples of their de-humanization are soaring and each
one shows a greater decisiveness and desire to create unrest and anger, and
to humiliate the Chileans. (p. 5)
The ‘pernicious’ acts of the Left were explained as the result of their lack of
morality and decency; they were seen as harming people only to satisfy their
passions. The evil and success of the Left are well expressed in the next quote:
This is a person that is capable of anything if the party asks for it: treason,
physical aggression, murder or genocide.
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 253
Palacios
It seems that the suffering of others gave the Left pleasure. This demonization of
the Left was the result of a permanent association between the Left, animality
and homosexuality. This connection is particularly interesting because of the
association between anomie, animality and femininity. The Chilean expression
for queue or line of people is cola, which also means ‘tail’, so it is interesting
to see how Chile (under the UP government) was seen as growing a tail. It was
akin to saying, ‘We are becoming so primitive (violent, anarchists) that we now
resemble an animal’. The newspaper Tribuna used to refer to communists as
colas (again, ‘tails’), which also means homosexual in local pejorative slang.
The association between these terms is quite clear: Chile is becoming a
homosexual country. As we shall see, this pejorative understanding of the
country seems to have been a crucial element in the overall justification and
spread of violence.
Chile has been transformed into a gigantic line of people that goes from
Arica to Magallanes. Men and women of all ages have found themselves
forced to stand in the most diverse lines to obtain what they need for their
homes. What started as an ordered way of making beef available to all has
been extended to almost every food supply.
254 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
only to the populace as individuals, but also to the whole of society too. Their
enemies, the ‘communists’, were capable not only of taking their economic and
political power from them, but also of taking the very soul of their society.
The political struggle and antagonism between the Right and Left was framed
as a battle between good and evil. The Right, defending the social order (and
basic principles of morality), could become violent, inmoral – to protect the
social order (‘good has to win, no matter what’). Secure in its identity (as
the holder of high moral standards), the political Right could easily transgress
the basic principles of its community without fearing the loss of its identity.
The other two dimensions of fantasy – hate and sexuality – were also present
in the political campaigns. They were expressed mostly in the demonization of
communists, who were always compared to animals, who were guided by their
instincts and lacked moral fiber, or to worthless and irrational crowds.
Regarding sexuality, in the two campaigns it was possible to see how the Right
used the language of the ‘father’ (of order, authority and rationality) against the
‘feminine’ passionate (anomic) language of the Left. The Tribuna newspaper
constantly referred to Left-wingers as miricones, a neologism compounded from
two words: mirista (belonging to the MIR, a revolutionary Left-wing group)
and maricones (degenerates, homosexuals). As previously mentioned, they also
often referred to them as colas which has the same pejorative meaning as
mirista. In this game of words and deeds, the military ended up being seen as
ultimately authoritative men pitted against the politicians, who could neither
prevent nor stop social, economic and political disaster. This feminization of the
Left, which could ultimately destroy the symbolic father, explains why fear of
the destruction of legal and police institutions became so important; it seemed
as if the Left could also kill the father.
Along with political scientists, one could argue that anti-Communism repre-
sented a radical opposition to the structural economic changes pursued by the
Socialist government. Moreover, the political polarization and the economic
crisis are certainly variables that cannot be ignored in the analysis of this period
of Chilean history. As my study has shown, however, these phenomena were
accompanied by deeper psychosocial processes, experienced mostly as fear of
anomie. This legalist, orderly, friendly and rational country was turning into
a passionate, chaotic, hateful society. Violence and animosity took over the
streets, workplaces and universities. Clearly, antagonism between the Right
and the Left was already physical before the coup, not only because there
were paramilitary organizations on each side (Fatherland and Liberty, on the
Right; and Leftist Revolutionary Movement, on the Left) that were physically
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 255
Palacios
confronting each other in the streets, university campuses and workplaces, but
also because of existing ‘aggressive jealousy’.
Let us remember that the radicalization of the opposition between Right and
Left in Chile had commenced with the Agrarian Reform during 1964, when
landowners (the traditional oligarchs of Chilean society) felt betrayed by their
workers, with whom they historically had had a paternalistic relationship. The
Leftist euphoria of the late 60s and the euphoria that accompanied the victory
and the three subsequent years of Socialist government meant for the Right not
only a political defeat, but also an experience of emotional resentment that only
grew bolder during the early 70s. These were years in which politics was not
discussed in the parliament but was acted out in the streets. Demonstrations,
fights, parades, strikes, and the like were permanently in the background of
every major city of the country. The feeling was that this ‘excess’ of politics was
leading the country into a civil war.
From the perspective of my research, this acting out is understood as part of
the clear displacement that took place from the more discursive dimensions of
fantasy (universality and antagonism), to the more libidinal ones (sexuality and
hate). That is, in 1970 the struggle between the Right and the Left was mostly
ideological: the Right presented itself as the political actor who could provide
Chile with a better society (free, peaceful, modern) compared with the Left,
which was seen as inspired by a violent and totalitarian foreign ideology.
In 1973, however, the political struggle was more existential than ideological.
The Right was not only fighting Communism, but also fighting for the survival
of Chile as a nation. The enemy was not only the Communist militants
(portrayed in 1970 as ‘lacking morality and individuality’), but a Chilean
‘mob’ that was destroying the country and its people, for the very pleasure of
it, just to satisfy their lower instincts. Under the Socialist government, they
argued, Chileans unleashed a primitive self that threatened the very existence
of the country. Indeed, my research findings indicate that the social, economic
and political chaos experienced in Chile from the late 60s, although initially
seen as the product of bad political leadership, was later perceived as the
consequence of an immoral public. The people of Chile had become a sinister
monster capable of the worst crimes committed to satisfy their basest passions.
The displacement of hate from the Leftist political elite to the general public
seems crucial in understanding the breadth and character of the violence
of 1973.
The violence against thousands of Chileans – children included – was
certainly facilitated by the symbolic transformation in which the very values of
individuality and of humanity slowly disappeared behind a hateful fantasy. That
is, the political fight – and, later on, repression – were directed not only against
an imaginary, well-organized Red army, but against a ‘deadly spirit’ awakened
by the Socialist government. This omnipresent specter hid behind a faceless mob
and was condensed in the figure of the Communist.
256 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
Conclusions
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 257
Palacios
Although the Left in Chile has regained its credibility and legitimate space in
the political arena, other, more subtle processes of othering have taken place.
Especially noteworthy is the ‘fear of the youth’, which has already produced
various forms of social exclusion and penalization as a result of the anxiety
that youths seem currently to evoke in the adult population. Understanding this
new phenomenon – which seems to be worldwide – could benefit from the
theoretical framework presented here, although its study would certainly
require its own research to differentiate the local and context-related elements
that distinguish it from the more general aspects related to the process of
identity formation and othering that has been presented in this paper.
Dr Margarita Palacios graduated from the New School for Social Research in
New York. She has taught sociology in New York and Berlin and is a lecturer in
the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her
current research focuses on melancholia and violence.
Note
References
258 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
A psychosocial interpretation of political violence
Durkheim, E. (1912, 1965) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.
Elliot, A. (2002) Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Fink, B. (2000) A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Theory and
Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Freud, S. (1900, 1953) Interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4 & 5. London:
Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1921, 1955) Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Standard Edition, 18.
London: Hogarth Press, pp. 60–143.
Freud, S. (1923, 1951) The ego and the id. Standard Edition, 19. London: Hogarth Press,
pp. 12–66.
Gurr, T. (1970) Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Informe Rettig. (1991) Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación sobre
Violación a los Derechos Humanos en Chile 1973–1990. Santiago, Chile: Ministerio
Secretarı́a General de Gobierno.
Informe Valech. (2005) Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Prisión Polı́tica y Tortura.
Santiago, Chile: Ministerio Secretarı́a General de Gobierno.
Katzestein, P. (ed.) (1996) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World
Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kelly, R. and Maghan, J. (1998) Hate Crime: The Global Politics of Polarization. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Kornbluh, P. (2003) The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and
Accountability. New York: New York Press.
Kristeva, J. (1980) Desire in Language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1984) Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. New York: Verso.
Linz, J. and Stepan, A. (1978) The Breakdown of Democracy, Vol. 4. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Murderous UP callousness. (1973) Tribuna. 25 February.
O’Donnel, G. (1979) Tensions in the bureaucratic-authoritarian state and the question of
democracy. In: D. Collier (ed.) The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 285–319.
Palacios, M. (2004) On sacredness and transgression: Understanding social antagonism.
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 9: 284–297.
Palacios, M. (2009) Fantasy and Political Violence. Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften.
Poole, D. (ed.) (1994) Unruly Order: Violence, Power, and Cultural Identity in the High
Provinces of Southern Peru. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Reyes Matta, F., Duran, C. and Ruiz, C. (1989) La Prensa: Del Autoritarismo a la Libertad.
Santiago, Chile: CERC.
Salecl, R. (1996) Hate speech. In: J. Copjec (ed.) Radical Evil. New York: Verso.
Smelser, N. (1962) Theory of Collective Behavior. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Subercaseaux, B. (1997) Historia de las Ideas y de la Cultura en Chile. Santiago, Chile:
Editorial Universitaria.
Sunkel, G. (1983) El Mercurio: 10 Años de Educación Polı́tica e Ideológica, 1969–1979.
Santiago, Chile: Estudios ILET.
r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260 259
Palacios
260 r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 16, 3, 244–260
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.