For an anthropology of riot’s landscape: ruination, iconoclasm, and anthropophagy at Dignity Square

Abstract

Via an anthropological gaze, the present article explores the construction of a landscape of protest through three conceptual devices: ruination, iconoclasm, and anthropophagy. Based on ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork undertaken in the historic center of Santiago de Chile between October 2019 and March 2020, these processes are explored through focusing on the material transformations that took place during demonstrations in and around the public square, the church, and the monument. We argue that the exercise of building a landscape of protest as a space of resistance, desire, memories, anger, and heterotopias is expressed by making possible the exorcism of the specters of recent past political violence. Additionally, material transformations enable the construction of an emotional community that is begins to make possible a process of political and cultural transformation, necessary for the ongoing writing of a new Chilean constitution.

Keywords:
Riots; Ruination; Anthropophagy; Iconoclasm; Chile