Political Technologies of Memory: Uses and Appropriations of Artefacts that Register and Denounce State Violence Oriana Bernasconi,* Elizabeth Lira † and Marcela Ruiz** ABSTRACT 1 This article contributes to understanding the role of technologies during political violence and in transitional justice contexts, studying a case that was contemporaneous with the transnational construction of human rights activism. Examining documenta- tion technologies that sustained nonviolent civic resistance to state terrorism during Chile’s Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), the article highlights the role of technology in creating the kind of register that has become commonplace in human rights settings. Considering the use of technology over time, we propose the notion of ‘political technologies of memory’ to name the lasting effects of artefacts that register and denounce human rights violations. We discuss as ‘transposition’ the operations by which technologies may be transferred and appropriated, transcending their initial pro- duction context and purpose. We offer examples of registry technologies’ transposition into transitional justice mechanisms, showing how one such example was represented through an artwork that engaged Chilean society in an ongoing transitional justice conversation. KEYWORDS: human rights violations, technological effects, technological inscrip- tions, technological transpositions, Chile INTRODUCTION Questions about technology may be answered from different perspectives. Nowadays, registry methods benefit from the availability of audiovisual resources, plus forms of mass communications media and dissemination, all of which were un- imaginable 40 years ago. This is not, however, an article about technological innov- ation. 1 In the 1970s and 1980s, when most of the registers we deal with in this article were initiated, the tools for registration work consisted, at most, of * Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile. Email: obernasc@uahurtado.cl † Dean, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Email: elira@uahurtado.cl ** Lecturer, Department of Language and Literature, Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Email: mruiz@uahurtado.cl 1 Funded by CONICYT PIA SOC180005. 1 On this subject, see, Molly K. Land and Jay D. Aronson, eds., New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). V C The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com  7 International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2019, 13, 7–29 doi: 10.1093/ijtj/ijy033 Advance Access Publication Date: 23 January 2019 Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article-abstract/13/1/7/5299620 by Universidad Alberto Hurtado user on 04 March 2019