Aesthetics of resistance in the migrant habitat. The case of the Los Nogales neighborhood, Estación Central, Santiago, Chile

Abstract

Based on a conception of aesthetics outside the artistic and much closer to daily life, this research sought to understand how material expressions of the migrant habitat alter the aesthetics of neighborhoods and generate resistance to the dominant power in the territory. The methodology comprised preparing a spatialized inventory of aesthetic inventions in a case study in Santiago, Chile. This was done using systematic neighborhood photographic tours, generating more than five hundred photographs and four audiovisual records. This material was analyzed to look for recurring patterns using the research’s theoretical guidelines and support from visual and sensory ethnography. The results are grouped into four main areas – the house, the street, the shops, and the street trade – revealing how daily aesthetics transform a neighborhood setting and enable new forms of exchange and sociability among its inhabitants. It is concluded that these aesthetic manifestations weave the composition of communities and alterities, generating territorial dynamics that challenge city-imposed homogeneity. Hence, plausibility is needed to understand them, not only as the means of cultural hybridism but also as resistance aesthetics.