ACTIVATING AFFECT AURA THROUGH ART

Abstract

In this paper, we examine clothing and material fibers as affective elements that function as witnesses to a structure of power. Specifically, we consider them as material bystanders of the human’s encounter with state-level violence in two contexts: the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and the militarization of the US/Mexico border region of the Sonoran Desert. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s notion of affective economies, we first consider how each context mobilized affect to create a culture of hate toward the Other in which abuses became normalized and accepted. Then, we turn to the aftermath of state violence and how clothing perceived as witness is offered as a means of interrupting the violent legacy of these two contexts. By its past experience of mediating interactions within these violent spaces, we draw from Benjamin, Deleuze, and Ahmed to argue that clothing from contexts of political violence takes on elements of that atmosphere of mistreatment, retaining a history imprinted upon it by the subjects it clothed, an imprint we refer to as “affect aura.” We then examine how two artists have used this clothing in their art, drawing upon its affect aura to bring forth a testimonial potential that they mobilize to rehumanize and combat the violent past.

Keywords:

• clothing as witness
• affect aura
• materiality and memory
• non-human archive
• state violence
• Pinochet dictatorship
• US/Mexico border
• Sonoran Desert region

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Mandolessi and Perez discuss the term’s primary use in Argentina, though their arguments can be construed to refer to the Southern Cone in general, Argentina simply having the highest estimated number of disappearances of the region, estimated at 30,000.

2 Many families with disappeared loved ones use the photograph from the disappeared’s state ID card as the image they carry in protests seeking to acknowledge, commemorate, and denounce disappearance.

3 Governmental groups working on these tasks include officials of land management, land and wildlife conservationists, and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.