Dignity. Politics and Performativity of the Disputed City

Abstract

This article deals with the problems of the transformation of the city of Santiago in the context of the social revolt in October 2019. For this, theoretical lines have been defined that visualize the city as a stage in which various symbolic universes of its inhabitants flow and that are exacerbated in crisis contexts through performative intervention processes that are manifested by individuals and groups in processes of political mobilization.

The focus defined for this article is conditioned to answer the question: how is the city resignified from the performative actions of individuals and groups in the public space of Santiago de Chile? This is done through the autoethnographic method that focuses on the systematization process of the very experience of inhabiting the crisis. Realizing the existing relationships between the various symbolic contexts, theoretical references and field observations.

In this sense, the proposed text reveals the crisis as a dispute that allows an exercise of deconstruction of the urban fabric, a decolonial performative action that claims a place in the city by groups and individuals, who are part of dissidences, indigenous groups and migrants, amalgamating a syncretism in the urban ethos, which leads us to think of a turning point and why not say it too, a starting point to consider design in a real world in constant disputes for legitimacy.