Contemporary Chilean-Australian Relations: Transpacific Connections and Discursive Trajectories

Abstract

This thesis breaks fresh ground as a comparative study between contemporary Australia and Chile from a socio-historical, cultural and geopolitical point of view within the focus of the Free Trade Agreement – FTA – signed by Chile and Australia in July 2008. Firstly, it examines the dominant self-perceptions and international projections of both countries and their relation to each other in light of globalisation and economic progress. Secondly, this project analyses how power relations are deployed in official discourse, particularly regarding Australian-Chilean relations and to what extent they suggest mutual geopolitical asymmetries where capital has been placed at the centre. Taking these elements into consideration, this study deconstructs and examines the central features and performative functions of a selection of Chilean and Australian governmental discourses between 1990 and 2012 as well as bilateral news in both Australian and Chilean newspapers. This research combines theoretical tools from Latin American and English-speaking cultural studies with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) methodology. The latter gives a proper context to analyse the way two countries such as Australia and Chile portray transnational similarities and imbalances. With these two groups of concepts, this project traces the bilateral construction that has facilitated transoceanic exchange and interrogates the interrelation involving official discourses, social power and identity constructions. This study maintains that the dominant discourse of each nation around economic progress and regional exceptionality has led to a closer approach between these two countries, albeit in a context of bilateral asymmetries and internal fissures regarding national cohesion. Additionally, this thesis ascertains that the national discourse both in Chile and in Australia remains fractured as a consequence of a hegemonic Eurocentric vision regarding the nation-building project.