Unto the Next Generations: The Blurring of Binaries and the Re-creation of the Social in Lola Arias's El año en que nací

Abstract

This study explores the relationships of El año en que nací (The Year I Was Born) (2012) by the Argentine Lola Arias, within the social context of post-dictatorship Chile. Chile was characterized by a repressed and traumatized population whose governments aimed to depoliticize society in an effort to avoid the presumed cause of Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year authoritarian government – the extreme polarization of politics and the population reflected in media, documents and political rhetoric. By showing the play's strategy of collapsing the binaries that define Chile's polarization, the author posits that El año en que nací not only provides a model that questions what Diana Taylor and others have called the ‘archive’ or stable retainer of memory, but also models an alternative of the social, creating an opening for personal agency on the part of the actors and audience that offers an alternative to the official narrative of polarization.