Website of memory: The war of the Pacific (1879-84) in the global age of YouTube

摘要

This article is an examination of the comments attached to a video upload on YouTube of a Chilean television mini-series on the War of the Pacific (1879-84), one of Latin America's rare international wars, which pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia, and which in many ways remains an open historical wound. Posted by anonymous commentators whose national subject positions as Chileans, Peruvians, Bolivians and Argentines are nevertheless discernable, the comments offer a compelling perspective on the ways in which digital artefacts such as YouTube enable the circulation and reproduction of collective memories in de-territorialized and transnational ways. However, the analysis of these comments suggests that the operation of memory in global virtual spaces does not guarantee or even necessarily enable the unmooring of memory from the national. In fact, the evidence presented here suggests that global spaces such as YouTube may contribute to the strengthening of national, and indeed, nationalist memories.