Abstract

WANUMEN JIMENEZ, Sebastián. César López, the Escopetarra and the Memorialization of the Colombian Armed Conflict: Technologies and Apparatuses of Care. Recial [online]. 2022, vol.13, n.21, pp.63-87.  Epub Sep 19, 2022. ISSN 2718-658X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.53971/2718.658x.v13.n21.37846.

Colombian musician and activist César López has comforted victims of the Colombian civil war throughout his career. His songs, albums, and artistic-social projects memorialize painful recent-history events and human rights violations. In 2003, López created the escopetarra, a musical instrument that combines a rifle and a guitar. Thereafter, López has been a UN messenger of non-violence. I consider that his compositions are not only sonic memorials but are also musical gifts and, thus, technologies of care. Moreover, as Lopez’s works challenges the logic of heteronormative masculinity, I analyze this case through the feminist and gender studies lenses. I support these claims with data gathered through netnography of several online concerts and talks, interviews with López, reading journalistic sources, and observing Lopez’s interventions’ online records. I propose that López’s musical gifts operate homologously to memorializations as both share the categorization of technologies of care. Finally, I conclude that Lopez’s activism promotes the democratization of care as he destabilizes the exclusive association of care to the feminine and proposes new masculinities.

Keywords : musical gifts; sonic memorialization; technologies of care; ontological multiplicity; symbolic reparations.