Mutations of time and space in Chilean comics: from transition to social explosion

Abstract

There is a link between the forms of Chilean comics and the way in which political and social changes are manifested in the configuration of space in the city. The protests that ended the Pinochet dictatorship also created a movement of authors that came to an ending with the return of democracy. Afterwards, the social movements that took to the streets in the 21st century, and that produced the recent social outburst, have provoked Chilean cartoonists to look for a meeting point between the modernity of the graphic novel and the street pulse of the various social movements: there is a search to find a balance between reflection, testimony, the speed and spontaneity of the protest, as well in the large number of images and graphic works that appeared in the streets. Based on these reflections, this text seeks to analyze a corpus of works in which the political crisis is represented as a temporal and spatial problem —a way of inhabiting and taking charge of the past—, which is represented by the authors through the cartoon and the page as a space where both problems intersect.