Reverse chronology: Dr. Cristina Moyano analyzes current social context in innovative research project Fondecyt 2023

The research takes as its starting point the milestone of the election of President Boric, with the triumph of a different political generation, which installs a present and reorganizes the narrative regarding the year 2011.

Luciano Guzmán, USACh Journalist.- The Doctor in History, with a mention in Chilean History and dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Cristina Moyano, will seek to break the linear chronological sequence between 2011 and 2021, through a deep and innovative analysis in reverse. This in order to focus on how the “present historical time” has been socially constructed.

This research focuses on theoretical questions such as how does temporalization operate in the intersubjective experiences of social movements, political parties, and the sociopolitical narratives produced by intellectuals in contemporary societies? And on the empirical historical level, what political disputes have been at the base of the social historical construction of the present time?

We spoke with the academic and highest authority of the FAHU about this research:

-History is written by the victors, George Orwell declared in the middle of the century, a statement that continues more than valid when we refer to the question: in what historical moment are we?

-This research takes as its starting point the milestone of the election of President Boric, where a different political generation wins, which installs a present and reorganizes the narrative regarding the year 2011, considered for this group as the moment of the rebirth of social movement, which opens the cycle that allows it to culminate with the triumph of a coalition that does not have as reference the military dictatorship, but its opposition to the 30 or 40 years of transition to democracy.

In this sense, it is said that on March 11, 1990, the transition to democracy was completed when President Aylwin took office. However, this extends over time and there are several milestones in history that are usually associated with the end of this transition, such as when President Lagos signed the reordered Constitution in 2005 and opened the doors of Morandé 80, or also with the same death of Pinochet.

Are we still in this transition period?

The concern for the social construction of this time is closely related to the understanding of social change, as well as how the use of time operates politically in terms of the availability of historical possibilities.

It is enough to take as an example the emergence of new political parties with a marked generational tinge, which consequently generated conflicts in the traditional parties, both at the value level and in the purely legislative sphere. It is in this line that This research proposes as a central assumption that the definition of the present time ceased to be hegemonized by the experiences of the political elites that led the transition to democracy in Chile, situating ourselves in a conflictive process of generational interaction, expressed at the level of disputes and political debates.

-Considering this new format in retrospect, to what extent does this research contribute to the development of contemporary historical research in our country?

-We seek to reduce the comprehensive entropy of the time in which we are immersed, this according to the high level of uncertainty that we experience. Historiographical works do not usually refer to contemporary historical moments and changes, nor is it common to observe a convergence of thought that refers to these transformations. However, today we are clear that We are in a period of inflection, that the shock of October 18, 2019 and its consequences have not yet finished settling in a period not only of political uncertainties, but also strongly influenced by economic phenomena that has left inflation and the pandemic. We historians have the virtue of always knowing how the processes end, but in the case of this investigation, we still do not know. That is the risk and at the same time the main contribution. Sometimes the present historical time needs to be studied in a present key.