Maggie Stieby | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Maggie Stieby
Title: Resistance in Repetition: The Interaction between Collective Performances, Digital Networking, and Film in the Fight against Gender-Based Violence in Argentina and Chile
Major: Spanish
Minor: Biology
Pathways: Public Health; Global Impacts
Advisors: Aida Díaz de León

This study explores diverse strategies of collective performances and film to address political and social themes that endanger the safety and status of women in Argentina and Chile. The occupation of public space and the vehicle of technology are successful tools that appear in the two social movements of focus in this thesis: Ni Una Menos y Un Violador en Tu Camino. Those organized efforts allowed activists to reveal and criticize the institutional failures in the public sphere. In respect to the cinematic works – Una mujer fantástica (Sebastián Lelio, 2017) and Vicenta (Dario Doria, 2020) – I will analyze these cultural objects through their portrayal of women and the LGBTQ community and through their role as promoters of social-political change. My analysis will demonstrate the power behind shared knowledge that is communicated by collective feminists and movies, as these powerful performances make the systemic failures and actions of corrupt political leaders tangible. Both the political performances and film create emotional connections with the spectators, which emphasizes the value of the interaction with the collective performance and cultural object that reflects and/or influences society. My objective is to demonstrate how in a short moment of interaction with citizen mobilization in the street or with a film, spectators stop at an individual or collective memory that is based on the trauma caused by some form of violence. The different ways to communicate, deposit and transmit knowledge, known as the archive and the repertoire, stimulate the preservation of the techniques behind performance. My investigation reveals how we can see and discuss genealogy in the practices of resistance that exist in the last fifty years in Argentina and Chile. While this work does specifically focus on these countries in South America, these techniques that are explored in my thesis often replicate on a global scale as well.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.