The Mapuche Struggle for/of Recognition. Identity and Self-Determination in Chile

Abstract

The theory of recognition argues that identities are the product of a struggle to be recognised by a significant other so that the nonrecognition or misrecognition of an identity can lead to a type of social suffering which can be experienced by groups. While Axel Honneth‟s theory of recognition emphasises the individual, in order to develop its full critical potential, I argue that the theory of recognition needs to encompass collective identities and the role of institutions in its analysis. Ultimately, struggles over recognition lead to struggles over collective self-determination of minorities. This dissertation applies this theoretical framework to the struggle of the Mapuche people in Chile and shows how the birth of a Mapuche identity with an ethnonationalist consciousness can be interpreted as the result of a conflictual relationship between the Mapuche and the Chilean state. This conflict has led Mapuche ethnonationalists to engage in an agonistic struggle with the Chilean state since their project can only be achieved through a radical reconfiguration of the state which clashes with the Chilean political elite‟s interests. The Mapuche political movements reveal several difficulties and paradoxes typical of indigenous politics related to the way indigenous identity can best be embedded in a modern society. It is argued that it is important to avoid the danger of both reifying indigenous identity and diluting it altogether. It is also necessary to avoid either denying or idealising the indigenous people‟s political potential to disrupt what Jacques Rancière calls the police order.