The place of culture in the Chilean way to socialism. Notes about the aesthetic project of the Unidad Popular

Abstract

The present essay tries to reconstruct the force lines and conceptual knots of what we here denominate the aesthetic project of the Unidad Popular1.The purpose is to systematize the elements and conceptual figures that join the emblematic narrative of the New Man, identifying the particularities of this enunciative system developed by a group of intellectuals of the ’60s-’70s local scene that studied the relation between “culture” and “socialism” as two structural lines in which a symbolic process that places the “popular” as the new hegemonic form is thrown forth. The hypothesis is the following: the modernizing will of this enunciative system makes us consider how, through the development of “representational” or “popular” politics, the reflections on the political as a relation between identities (relations of opposition, subordination, hegemony) are reinforced, whilst making visible the subjectivizing power of this system. This consideration of the political problem as a conspicuously representational problem allows the understanding –still under the ideological code, as social conscience– of the essential importance given to culture being the horizon of integration and formulation of a new social unity.