Postcards from Chile and Images from an Archive: Lighting the Nitrate of the 1973 Coup

Louise Purbrick

doi:10.3390/h7040115

Postcards from Chile and Images from an Archive: Lighting the Nitrate of the 1973 Coup

Louise Purbrick

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article examines a mass produced postcard image as a picture of conflict. It considers the postcard as a Benjaminian ‘prismatic fringe’ through which an archive can be viewed, wherein documents of the British trade in Chilean nitrate are juxtaposed with those of General Pinochet’s 1973 military coup. The archive itself is explored as a site of loss and its postcard, an unvarying idealisation, as a particularly problematic but powerful image that renders conflict out of sight

Original language	English
Article number	115
Pages (from-to)	1-17
Number of pages	17
Journal	Humanities
Volume	7
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040115
Publication status	Published - 12 Nov 2018

Bibliographical note

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

Keywords

postcard
archive
conflict
nitrate
memory
trace
Chile

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10.3390/h7040115Licence: CC BY

Postcards from Chile and Images from an ArchiveFinal published version, 5.26 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Postcards from Chile and Images from an Archive: Lighting the Nitrate of the 1973 Coup",

abstract = "This article examines a mass produced postcard image as a picture of conflict. It considers the postcard as a Benjaminian {\textquoteleft}prismatic fringe{\textquoteright} through which an archive can be viewed, wherein documents of the British trade in Chilean nitrate are juxtaposed with those of General Pinochet{\textquoteright}s 1973 military coup. The archive itself is explored as a site of loss and its postcard, an unvarying idealisation, as a particularly problematic but powerful image that renders conflict out of sight",

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Postcards from Chile and Images from an Archive: Lighting the Nitrate of the 1973 Coup

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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