Obstinate memory: Working-class politics and neoliberal forgetting in the United Kingdom and Chile

In the 40 years since Chile and United Kingdom became crucibles of neoliberalization, working-class agency has been transformed, its institutions systematically dismantled politics, after continuity neoliberalism both UK Blair government Chilean Concertación, in a crisis legitimacy. process, memories struggle have captured within narratives ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher) – present, past future collapsed into Walter Benjamin’s ‘empty homogeneous time’. This article explores ways which two traumatic moments narrativized by media service this ‘presentism’: 1973 coup 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike Kingdom. We argue that use ‘living history’ or bottom-up approaches to memory provides an urgently needed recovery disruptive class identity offers way reclaiming alternative futures from grip reductive economic nationalism.