Die gewandelte Darstellung der Heldenfigur im chilenischen Schulbuch

Heroic figures are important reference points of collective memory and national identity. The textbook, as a medium of historical culture, is both, a product and a mediator of social processes. The present empirical study analyses textbooks from 2009 to 2016 to shed light on different forms of history education in Chile. The focus lies on historical phases of the Discovery of America with its figures Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan and on the phase of Chile's independence with its central figures José Miguel Carrera, Manuel Rodríguez and Bernardo O'Higgins. The work examines two different sectors of textbook production in Chile: the private sector and the state sector. Both reflect the social, socio-structural differentiation of the country. As a central and important result the textbook analysis reveals a Chilean culture of memory that is divided among the different sectors, yet not polemical. The work also delivers an empirical evidence of contrasting processes of heroization and de-heroization. Further results of the analysis are the derivation of different narrative forms (traditional, pluralistic, critical-intercultural) and types of heroization. In addition to the empirical analysis of textbooks also the contextual conditions of textbook production were taken into account via expert interviews with relevant stakeholders. Chile, as an emerging country in terms of educational policy, is to be considered a very interesting research case. The memory of the colonial past is shown to be ambivalent in the public sphere. The study was embedded in the context of current postcolonial debates in academia.