Exceptionalism, the Female Body, and the Public Sphere in the Bachelet Era, 2006–2015

Abstract

This chapter figures Chilean President Michelle Bachelet at the center of a debate currently underway in the country about the female body (politic): whether to accommodate to the public sphere—taking for granted the embodiment of its economic exceptionalism in male, heterosexual praxis—or to dissent from it. Diamela Eltit’s novel Impuesto a la carne (2010) meditates on Chile’s masculinist exceptionalism from the perspective of two women confined to a hospital; Guillermo Calderon’s play Discurso (2012) asks whether Bachelet can remain an exceptional figure with whom so many Chileans identify, despite the carefully disciplined facade she projects; and La cerda punk by Constanzx Alvarez (2014) performs a radical break with narratives of feminist inclusion in circles of power, in favor of women’s “sexual dissidence.”