Becoming “Hijas de la Lucha”: Political subjectification, affective intensities, and historical narratives in a Chilean all-girls high school

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the processes by which Chilean female feminist public high school students used political and historical narratives and symbols during the feminist movement of 2018. It analyzes how these particular usages were crossed by affective intensities that worked to produce students’ political subjectivities as collective and agentic. This affective work was produced with other members of the school community and sometimes was met with anger, policing practices, and desires to exclude students from particular historical narratives. The data for this article were produced within a yearlong critical ethnographic study on the processes of production of high school feminist students’ gender and political subjectivities in Chile, which included participant observation, testimonios interviews, art-based collective testimonios workshops, and analysis through affect theory. The findings show the types of historical and political narratives and symbols used by students, what affective intensities that crossed these symbols did to the students’ political subjectivities, and the conflicts these intensities produced within the school community. The article concludes by examining how these findings might open new questions within the field of social studies education research.