“Children of freedom”, notes on the social role of the National Historical Museum of Chile

Abstract

The controversy surrounding the temporary exhibition of the National Historical Museum of Chile (MHN) entitled "Children of Freedom, 200 Years of Independence" (2018), sparked a debate on social networks, the media and academic venues. The museum was accused of transgressing a social consensus regarding the representation of the dictator Pinochet and, with it, of transgressing itself as a stabilizing device of collective sense. This article focuses on the construction of this "self", putting its emergence and development into perspective. It is concluded that, with or without success, the museum effectively sought to transgress the distribution of the network between power, knowledge and memory that shapes its modern identity in order to try out a new possible identity, one that attempts to assume the complexity that the construction of collective meaning presents in today's Chile.