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Music has played a crucial role in recent Chilean history as a conduit for social and political demands, and the protests of 2019 were no exception. El Estallido, apart from being a social and political uprising, was also an artistic outburst. In part because demonstrators resorted to art to mobilise themselves, but also for the greater visibility of artists and their performances during the protests. With this in mind, my research explores music's role in fostering political transformation. I argue that protests can be occasions where aesthetic experiences (of music) can be made possible, enabling us to understand how they can be "politically" transformative even in cases where there is little or no change in the institutional arena.
Although my primary focus is on music, the concept of aesthetics used in my research is not limited to the theorisations of beauty or pleasure. Conversely, it refers to the form in which subjects experience their reality, but so too, to the polemical "distribution of the sensible" -as Jacques Rancière would say- that defines the perceivable and thinkable. It is polemical because it can be contested and re-arranged by way of acts of politics. By bringing the idea of aesthetics into the study of protest and social movements, my research not only challenges the conventional understandings associated with this notion, but also provides an alternative perspective for examining the intersection of art and politics. In doing so, my work aims to contribute to the ongoing debates surrounding a sociological understanding of aesthetics and aesthetic experience.
Since my research focuses on experience, in addition to analysing the lyrics of the songs, I also draw on 47 interviews with demonstrators –primarily musicians who participated in the uprising. Precisely, and drawing inspiration in the idea that protests are eventful, my thesis argues that the uprising was an event that altered the aesthetic and political fields of possibility by questioning "dominant modes of hearing", enabling the emergence of "impossible artists" that, through acts of dissensus enact the "universal of politics", but also by realising projected futures of "musicking". Not only did music foster a "sonic solidarity" capable of bringing together people who were all fighting (and singing) for the same thing, but it also contributed to developing "transhistorical solidarity", mobilising memories and making people connect with past and future struggles.