Latency, Biopolitics and the Reproductive Arena: An Alternative Masculinity in Ricardo Larraín's La frontera

In the Chilean film La frontera (1991), the dissident Ramiro is condemned to internal exile (relegación) under Pinochet's regime. My reading of the film is informed by three theories: I argue that this punishment is an act of Johan Galtung's 'structural violence' against Ramiro&#...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of Latin American research 2013-10, Vol.32 (4), p.438-450
Main Author: THAKKAR, AMIT
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
biopolitics
Chile
Chilean film
Cinema
dictatorship
exile
Foucault, Michel
La frontera
Larraín, Ricardo
Latin American history
Masculinity
Military regimes
Motion picture criticism
Political Defection
Political exile
Punishment
Reconstruction
Regime transition
reproductive arena
Special Issue Articles
Violence
Visual communication
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In the Chilean film La frontera (1991), the dissident Ramiro is condemned to internal exile (relegación) under Pinochet's regime. My reading of the film is informed by three theories: I argue that this punishment is an act of Johan Galtung's 'structural violence' against Ramiro's masculinity, that strategies of 'hiding' individual bodies for the sake of the 'social body' are relevant to biopolitics (Michel Foucault), and that La frontera exploits the formal potential of latency to reveal how Ramiro rebuilds his masculinity within what Raewyn Connell would term the 'reproductive arena'. Ramiro's resulting, alternative masculinity represents a challenge for the reconstruction of post-Pinochet Chile.
ISSN:0261-3050
1470-9856
DOI:10.1111/blar.12061