Hidden knowledge: childhood in autobiographical Chilean texts

Abstract

The following article is an analysis about biographical childhood texts incorporation in Chile. From a cultural view and trying to gather the scarce critical tradition around this kind of writing in Latin America, it proposes an interpretation regarding the late childhood expression as a time and space memory and subjectivity. Following our own reading, this could be explained by the strong Latin-American political mark on this literature and the autobiographical and secretarial aristocratic origin, linked to public life and urged to register their writings on national history, up to the middle of the century. The lack of childhood, or its elusive, and sometimes anecdotic representation, would have relationship with illuminist and positive speeches predominance between these authors; their appearance, to the slow fissure of these speeches and the incorporation of new actors on the national literary field, arriving from middle sectors or discriminated for their sexual gender, for those who would have less objections picturing that precise life moment in a more intimate and comprehensive way, trying to demand surpassing and personal worthy stories many times.