Development, the fate of the nation and the duty of our generation: official rhetorics of time and progress in contemporary Chile

Abstract

This article is an attempt to conceptualise, with the aid of various sources that stem from social sciences and philosophy, the way in which different ways to imagine the shape of time are implicit in Chilean official political rhetoric, and how these affect the way in which we perceive the past, what we understand as possible in the present and the possibilities that the hereafter can bring. Using as examples the way in which some of the most important political events in Chile are narrated, the article tries to unravel the form in which a certain discourse about the Nation, about its past and its identity is related with a way to project the future and, in practice, a mode of understanding the political map and the different forces in the present. Likewise, it endeavours itself to give an account of the different discursive forms in which the destiny of the Nation and the everyday experience of its inhabitants are woven together.