Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Post-representational Cultural Memory for Children in Chile: From La Composición to Bear Story

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Children's Literature in Education Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article analyses texts intended for child audiences—picturebooks, a poetry book, and a film—that deal with the Chilean dictatorship (1973–1990). The memorialization practices within children’s media appear to be modelled on the difficulties of finding a national consensus regarding the events that transpired during the dictatorship and the appropriate ways of rendering them for children. Lydia Kokkola’s work on the Holocaust as a motif shows that gaps of information are left to be picked up by the adult reading alongside the child. Children’s literature that refers to state violence is described as elusive or circumventive. This article approaches these texts as complex materialities, suspending the paradigm of representation and interpretation. Inspired by Ulrich Gumbrecht’s call for a post-hermeneutic literary theory and by new materialistic approaches to the humanities and education, it is argued that these texts are more profitably read and experienced as artworks that escape pedagogic domestication. Accordingly, this article examines these selected texts as pieces that may smuggle meanings and intensities into educational settings if their complexity is not reduced by mediation practices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. I am speaking about indigenously produced works. There were novels produced elsewhere, like James Watson's award winning Talking in Whispers (1983).

  2. All translations are mine, with the exception of this poem, by American literary translator Megan McDowell.

References

  • Adorno, Theodor W. (1983). Prisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, Sara. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arizpe, Evelyn, and McAdam, Julie. (2011). Crossing Visual Borders and Connecting Cultures: Children’s Responses to the Photographic Theme in David Wiesner’s Flotsam. New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 17(2), 227–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, Jan. (1995). Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, Karen. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, Karen. (2011). Nature’s Queer Performativity. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, 19(2), 121–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, Karen. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beauvais, Clémentine. (2015). What’s in “the Gap”? A Glance Down the Central Concept of Picturebook Theory. Barnelitterært Forskningstidsskrift, 6(1), 26969.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beckett, Sandra L. (2008). Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blanc, Natalia. (2017, March 24th). Literatura Infantil: Cómo Contar la Dictadura a los Chicos a Través de la Ficción. La Nación. Accessed April 18, 2018 from https://www.lanacion.com.ar/1998305-literatura-infantil-como-contar-la-dictadura-a-los-chicos-a-traves-de-la-ficcion.

  • Boltanski, Luc. (1999). Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bourriaud, Nicholas. (2002). Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses du réel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buitrago, Jairo, and Blanco, Daniel. (2015). Un diamante en el fondo de la tierra. Santiago: Amanuta.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buitrago, Jairo, and Yockteng, Rafael. (2008). Camino a Casa. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coole, Diana, and Frost, Samantha. (2010). Introducing the New Materialisms. In D. Coole (Eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (pp. 1–43). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Del Alcázar, Joan. (2014). Memoria para el futuro contra memorias obstinadas. Chile, cuarenta años después/Memory for the future against stubborn memories. Chile, 40 years later. Universitas, 20, 43–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. (1995). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), 9–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Enwezor, Okwui. (2008). Archive fever: Photography Between History and the Monument. In Okwui Enwezor (Eds.), Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art (pp. 11–51). Göttingen: Steidl.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estévez, Antonella. (2010). Dolores Políticos: Reacciones Cinematográficas. Resistencias Melancólicas en el Cine Chileno Contemporáneo. Aisthesis, 47, 15–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrada, María José. (2013). Niños. Santiago: Grafito.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fontdevila, Oriol. (2018). El arte de la Mediación. Barcelona: Consonni.

    Google Scholar 

  • Furió, Vicenç. (2002). Ideas y Formas en la Representación Pictórica. Barcelona: Edicions Universitat Barcelona.

    Google Scholar 

  • García-González, Macarena. (2017). Narrando la Dictadura a la Infancia. Imágenes que Trafican Significados. Catedral Tomada: Revista de Crítica Literaria latinoamericana, 5(9), 84–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • García, Llorens, Francisco, Ramón, and Terol Bertomeu, Sara. (2015). Educación Literaria, Pensamiento Crítico y Conciencia Ética: La Composición, de Antonio Skármeta. América sin Nombre, 20, 102–109.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giussani, Laura. (2014). El Miedo a las Palabras. Sobre el Mercado y los Temas Tabú en la LIJ Actual. Revista Había Una Vez, 19, 13–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • González, Felipe. (2015). Micro-Foundations of Financialization. Status Anxiety and the Market for Consumer Credit in Chile. Ph.D Thesis: Universität zu Köln.

  • González, María José. (2014). Literatura Infantil Chilena y Dictadura: ¿un Silencio Elocuente? Revista Había Una Vez, 17, 30–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregg, Melissa, and Seigworth, Gregory J. (2010). The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, Elizabeth A. (2008). Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. (2004). Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. (2012). Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanán Díaz, Fanuel. (2007). Leer y Mirar el Libro Álbum un Género en Construcción. Buenos Aires: Editorial Norma.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herrera, Antonia, and Osorio, Gabriel. (2016). Historia de un Oso. Santiago: Zig Zag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jelin, Elizabeth. (2002). Los Trabajos de la Memoria. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kidd, Kenneth B. (2005). “A” is for Auschwitz: Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory, and the “Children’s Literature of Atrocity”. Children’s Literature, 33(1), 120–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kokkola, Lydia. (2002). The unspeakable. Children’s Fiction and the Holocaust. In Roger D. Sell (Ed.), Children’s Literature as Communication (pp. 213–233). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kokkola, Lydia. (2013). Representing the Holocaust in Children’s Literature. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kress, Gunther, and van Leeuwen, Theo. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Krips, Valerie. (2004). The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage and Childhood in Post-War Britain. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacLure, Maggie. (2013). Researching Without Representation? Language and Materiality in Post-qualitative Methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658–667.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martín Roguero, Nieves. (2008). Guerra Civil y Posguerra en la Narrativa Escrita en Castellano. In B. Roig-Rechou, P. Lucas-Domínguez (Eds.), A Guerra Civil Española na Narrativa Infantil e Xuvenil (pp. 31–50). Vigo: Edicións Xerais de Galicia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massumi, Brian. (1995). The Autonomy of Affect. Cultural Critique, 31, 83–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muñoz-Chereau, Bernardita. (2017). Representations of Dictatorship in Contemporary Chilean Children’s Literature. Children’s Literature in Education. Accessed April 18, 2018 from https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10583-016-9297-z.pdf.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nance-Carroll, Niall. (2014). Innocence is No Defense: Politicized Childhood in Antonio Skármeta’s La composición/The Composition. Children’s Literature in Education, 45(4), 271–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikolajeva, Maria, and Scott, Carole. (2001). How Picturebooks Work. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Neil, Kathleen Ellen. (2011). Reading Pictures: Developing Visual Literacy for Greater Comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 65(3), 214–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramos, Ana Margarida. (2010). Recent Portuguese Children’s Literature: From Dictatorship to Freedom. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, 48(4), 28–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz, Rodrigo. (2014). María José Ferrada y libro sobre niños víctimas de la dictadura: “Decidí que la mejor forma sería nombrarlos desde la vida”. El desconcierto. Accessed April 18, 2018, from http://www.eldesconcierto.cl/2014/09/11/maria-jose-ferrada-decidi-la-mejor-forma-seria-nombrarlos-desde-la-vida-desde-esa-vida-que-se-les-arrebato/.

  • Sipe, Lawrence R. (1998). How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships. Children’s Literature in Education, 29(2), 97–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skármeta, Antonio, and Gleich, Jacky. (2003). Der Aufsatz. Hamburg: Dressler.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skármeta, Antonio, and Lozupone, Delia. (2006). La composición. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skármeta, Antonio, and Ruano, Alfonso. (2000). La composición. Caracas: Ekaré.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephens, John. (1992). Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strauss, Amanda. (2015). Treading the Ground of Contested Memory: Archivists and the Human Rights Movement in Chile. Archival Science, 15(4), 369–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Styles, Morag, and Nobel, Kate. (2009). Thinking in Action: Analysing Children’s Multimodal Responses to Multimodal Picturebooks. In Janet Evans (Ed.), Talking Beyond the Page: Reading and Responding to Picturebooks. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomkowiak, Ingrid. (2018). It’s all made by hand.“Ästhetik und Inszenierung des Handgemachten in Animationsfilmen. In I. Tomkowiak (Eds.), Spielarten der Populärkultur. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traverso, Antonio. (2010). Dictatorship Memories: Working Through Trauma in Chilean Post-Dictatorship Documentary. Continuum, 24(1), 179–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Troncoso Araya, Anahí. (2015). La Tematización de la Dictadura en la Literatura Para Niños y Niñas Chilena. Umbral, 9(1), 4–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, James. (1983). Talking in Whispers. London: Gollancz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yokota, Junko. (2014). Realism in Picture Books for Children: Representations of Our Diverse World. Filoteknos, 4, 55–64.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This article was funded by Conicyt (Comisión de Ciencia y Tecnología) Project PIA CIE 160007

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Center on Advanced Studies in Educational Justice, Santiago, Chile

    Macarena García-González

Authors
  1. Macarena García-González
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Macarena García-González.

Additional information

Macarena García-González is research associate at the Center for Advanced Studies on Educational Justice at the Universidad Católica de Chile. She has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies from Zurich University and an MA in Cultural Studies from Maastricht University. She writes about children’s literature and media and about emotion and posthumanism in educational contexts. She has recently published Origin Narratives: The Stories We Tell Children about International Adoption and Immigration (Routledge, 2017).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

García-González, M. Post-representational Cultural Memory for Children in Chile: From La Composición to Bear Story. Child Lit Educ 51, 160–178 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-018-9361-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-018-9361-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation