Larrain Salas, Daniela Paz (2025) Archiving perpetrators : Analysing Chilean legal archives of political crimes during the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
This thesis explores the production of the perpetrator through the legal archive concerning political crimes committed during the Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The available literature about perpetrators in Latin America has tended to focus on state agents’ testimonies and post-dictatorship official narratives that have defined the meanings around violence. This thesis, instead, redefines conventional conceptualisations of the figure of the perpetrator, understanding it as an ‘archival production’ by looking at the process of recording violence, and the multiple relations between legal evidence and the contested modes of interpreting it. Thus, expanding the theoretical framework and evidence base traditionally considered by scholars, I argue that the perpetrator involves a complex set of interconnections between subjects, spaces, institutions, practices, devices and transportation means, among others, that reflect how repression operated throughout the country. This research takes a transdisciplinary approach, drawing on the so-called archival turn and post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, spatial theories, and aesthetics. It examines the contested processes of registering and erasing violence by the regime, the judiciary, and human rights organisations, as well as the material creation of archives during the dictatorship and post-dictatorship. Specifically, it delves into three legal cases involving murder, kidnapping, and forced disappearance, along with counter-records from human rights organisations. This approach allows me to explore from different angles how the perpetrator emerges through legal archives in multiple forms and the interconnected elements that sustained extreme violence during the regime on various levels of intervention. Overall, this thesis presents a novel analytical perspective on the perpetration of state violence and legal archives, considering the entanglement of legal evidence, the information it provides and its interpretation over long-term trials. By highlighting the legal space as an evolving territory where modes of registering violence and competing discourses converge, this study contributes to existing scholarship on perpetrators, archives of repression, political violence dynamics, and the legal system’s role in state terrorism and justice accountability. Keywords: Perpetrator; Legal archive; Chilean dictatorship; Archival productions; Registers; Spectres.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Apr 2025 12:59 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Apr 2025 13:00 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/55420 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00055420 |
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