Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between the medical practice of the machis and issues relating to memory and violence, one of the olvidos of Chile. Freud’s concept of the uncanny is analysed, not in the original psychoanalytic sense as a part of the individual mind, but as part of a collective framework for remembering and acting in connection with experiences of terror and destruction. Exploring a case study of illness, I argue that memories of violence are articulated and negotiated through the social framework available in a given context, in this case personal narrative, bodily symptoms and indigenous medical practices. Medical practices and disease categories can serve to articulate, confront and rework situations of terror and the threat of personal destruction in connection with memories of state violence. This happens because, through medical practices, the body acquires the vocabulary, images and agency necessary for expressing and negotiating experiences of terror and destruction.
Not a leaf stirs in Chile without me moving it.
(General Augusto Pinochet 1981, cited in Collier and Sater 2004: 359)
This chapter is a revised version of the following publication: Dorthe Brogård Kristensen 2010 “Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine in Southern Chile.” In Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission. Nicolas Argenti and Katharina Schramm, eds. Pp. 63–82. New York: Berghahn.
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Notes
- 1.
As a consequence, in November 2004 the former president, Ricardo Lagos, officially recognized the responsibility of the government for the violation of human rights during the military regime (La Nación, 29 November 2004).
- 2.
A number of programmes followed. Later in 1977, the organization El Fundación Social de las Iglesias Cristianas (FASIC) founded a psychiatric programme; in 1979, the programme PIDEE (Fundación para la Protección de la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencía) was established for the treatment of children. Furthermore, in 1980, El Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo (COPECU) was founded, which united left-wing personalities; and in 1982, the programme DITT (Equipo de Denuncia, Investigación y Tratamiento del Torturado y su Grupo Familiar) was created, for the reporting, investigation and treatment of victims of torture and their families. In 1982, El Departamento Pastoral de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Concepción started a programme for medical attention. In 1984, in cooperation with RCT (Centre for Torture and Rehabilitation) in Denmark, a centre for documentation and treatment of stress was developed called CINTRAS. In 1985, Policlínica Metodista de Temuco established a programme for mental health, and in 1988, Instituto Latinoamericano de Salud Mental y Derechos Humanos (ILAS) began to specialize in clinical work for the treatment of “extreme traumatization” (ILAS 1996).
- 3.
Turning to the literature on mental health and the effects of torture on family structure, similar symptoms appear. Not only do the victims suffer, the entire family suffers directly or indirectly from the torture of family members. In the literature on torture and trauma, family members are often described as suffering from feelings of fear, anxiety, uncertainty and grief (ILAS 1996).
- 4.
This idea has been suggested by Desjarlais et al. as applicable in the case of Chile, in their volume World Mental Health, where they point to a study that has identified three core features of persistent fear among the Chilean population: firstly, a sense of personal weakness and vulnerability and a feeling of powerlessness; secondly, sensory perception remaining in a permanent state of alert; and thirdly, a distorted perception of reality (1995: 199–122).
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Kristensen, D.B. (2019). Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine. In: Patients, Doctors and Healers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97031-8_6
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