Abstract

In the months that followed the Chilean revolution of 2019, local assemblies gathered to reconstruct the social tissue in their neighborhoods. Acting upon a malestar (unease) with a system and a political class that protestors traced back to the authoritarian implementation of a neoliberal regime in Chile, neighbors came together to create communal networks based in different modes of relatedness and responsibility. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork and participatory action research (Mackenzie et al. 2012) conducted during the protests, this paper argues that a neoliberal imaginary and the central role attributed to the market as administrator of social relations have shaped the way in which social interactions and spaces are actively lived in Chile. We suggest that in response, Chilean street- assemblies have acted to reconstruct social tissue by reconnecting participants with each other. In doing so, they established themselves as ethical spaces for decision making that allow for contingency and not-knowing.