Body/Territory & Intersectionality: Seeing Inequality through the Walls of Santiago

Abstract

This essay connects the notions of body/territory and intersectionality in analysing street artivism during the Chilean uprising of 2019. Two vignettes are used to illustrate how conceptually the notion of body/territory reflects experiences of inequality (based on gender, class and nationality) as part of the violence exercised upon the territories where these experiences unfold. Methodologically, the lens of body/territory enables reading street artivism both as an aesthetic expression of protest and as a mechanism to reveal the intersectional character of how inequality is experienced by bodies in territories. The paper shows that the body/territory imaginary affords a spatial character to intersectionality, which in turn strengthens public spaces’ democratic potential.