Author Description

This study sets out to explore the meanings of a set of historical events for a group of Chilean men and women in exile in the West of Scotland since the Chilean coup d'état of September 1973. The author begins by giving some historical and biographical information, focusing on the shifting terrain of public and private spheres and their relation to questions of class and gender. She then examines some of the methodological issues raised when asking actors to give accounts of their life experiences. In discussing the rupture of the public and private domains, Ms Kay focuses on the coup and the emotionally charged process of leaving the country before turning to the initial experiences of men and women in exile and their differing feelings of deprivation and loss. The study then treats the ways in which the politicized actors set about reconstructing their world in exile, their attempts to regain a level of collective identity by regrouping politically. Whereas this analysis deals mostly with men, the author also looks at the experience of women in exile, those who worked outside the home in Chile and the women in the home. Class differences are accentuated in terms of the women's activities. The crisis for many women in the private sphere is examined through various attempts to organize women in exile and the failure of the 'Revolution in the revolution' to change the place of women in the political sphere. The study concludes with certain generalities concerning gender dimensions in the analysis of exile and comments regarding the typicality of the case examined.