Irina Karamanos: the institutional unanchoring of the role of First Lady has to do with democratic values (Part 1)

We talked to Irina Karamanos about the purpose that led her to deconstruct the institutional anchoring of the role of First Lady. We also anticipate the reflections that will take place at the International Feminist Meeting, to be held in Madrid at the end of February.

We publish here an extract from the video as well as the full transcript of this conversation, which in our opinion represents a gesture that has not yet been sufficiently considered or understood, and which corresponds to a highly democratic conception of society.

The video was recorded and edited by Aníbal Feres.

The interview took place in the Minus café, located in its interior courtyard at the Museo del Sonido, in the heart of Santiago de Chile’s Barrio Yungay. Special thanks to its Executive Director, Sofía Forttes, for her great availability.

This is the first part, tomorrow we will broadcast the second and final part of our conversation.

Pressenza: It is a pleasure to be here…

Irina Karamanos: For me too, thank you very much.

Pressenza: Thanks to you and above all to talk to Irina Karamanos who is no longer First Lady. How was that?

Irina Karamanos: Well, it was a very similar beginning to the end. Because in reality it was a plan that deserved a very profound reflection from the beginning to see if I would take on this role or not.

What we knew at the beginning was that there was a cultural vision created around the role that was not so visible, and many times some changes can only be generated with the visibility of an issue, of a problem, and we really set out to investigate this vision, but first we had to investigate the institutional framework in which this role was anchored.

I wouldn’t have got involved if it had been just a cultural issue. This role was anchored within the institution, which from a perspective of democratic values and wanting to improve the state, presented us with an opportunity as an activist, in my case, to put myself at the service, also as a feminist, to be in a space that was perhaps, I wouldn’t say unauthorised, but unlikely, right? A little improbable to enter from feminist thought.

However, stripping away a bit of identity, of “I am a feminist”, also has to do with actions, and the prism from which things are done.

So, there was this cultural vision around the role, but there was also the institutional anchoring. And by making this visible, and also by generating a public debate, we were able to open up paths for it to make a change, changes, with responsibility, that is to say, also gradually, and that was the plan.

And then, of course, we began to investigate, to do an archaeology of what those institutionalised parts of this role were over time, in order to be able to collectivise the problems and the truth is that it didn’t even have to start with me and us, but it was also quite evident for the people who were already working within this institutional framework, such as the foundations, etc., that in reality there was a greater identification with the profession and with the very mission of their respective issues that did not complete the vision of the First Lady, which in reality is more related to the President’s partner. Publicly what is most identified for this role, this figure, is that.

There is also a trend that can change, alternatives to the trend can be presented. For example, there is a trend regarding how a political figure should behave, in front of the media, in front of the press, how he has to sit, how much he has to talk, because in my case this plan was a plan that was going to have a limited amount of time. We didn’t know if it was going to be a year or a little more, but it was less than a year. By finding the formula, it was less.

But as it was a limited plan and a mission and a militant service, for me this was also a militant work to improve political institutionality, in the end an instrument of citizenship and of the people, I was not looking for a political career and therefore I was not looking for media visibility, media prominence, and that was out of this tendency that stops repeating itself. And when something stops repeating itself, these voids are filled with interpretations or other readings. Presenting an alternative was an interesting and obviously difficult process. In other words, an alternative to how one relates to the media, an alternative to how one works in a place of high exposure, but working very much on the inside. Very much in the infrastructure of this institutionality.

The responsibility had to do with not having arrived and changed everything without having consulted anyone, so that work was very intense and it was very profound, not needing to be visible. Because the intention was not to promote the figure, nor necessarily to expose the workers who were linked to it, but to carry out a process with them.

This trend, both in terms of how the media behaves and how a politician behaves in front of the media, has to do with the fact that they are models that repeat themselves, until something changes them.

This proposal in itself had an aspiration to change the model in which this figure, this role of First Lady, merged with the subject who entered that role. One invests the President’s partner, or the Sociocultural Director in other cases, with clothes that from the outside look as if they were the same. It is as if the subject merges with the role, leaving the subject himself a little trapped in that model.

And the subject – as Batler and many others say – has a power, a potential, to interrupt precisely the repetition, precisely the maintenance of the models.

So, when I took on this role of inhabiting the position of First Lady, I did have the desire to see myself as a subject within it, not necessarily to merge myself, also as a political exercise, but on the other hand intellectually and because in this way it also allowed me to review it from the inside.

From the point of view of political and democratic responsibility, of probity, and because in reality, when updating, or trying to update the spaces of political institutionality, it seems to me that one seeks to reinterpret democratic values, but also the values of the new generations and of the new contemporary times. And for that, one also has to take a bit of distance and not only enter, use the potential that the subject has to seek that, also in the sense that it is a space, that of the First Lady, that institutional place, which did not have all the democratic credentials, unlike other spaces that are lacking for the political institutionality to be more democratic. There are groups of the population that do not have a place in politics, but the President’s partner does.

These questions are part of the reflection that can be made with this and also the process itself leads to questioning how the subjects within politics are making these small changes.

I think it is very important – I have heard it from girls and young women – who were challenged by these proposals, because their subjectivity was challenged, as they did not recognise themselves so much in politics, because they did not necessarily see these turns towards the new. What it is and how we generate new horizons. How we update political institutionality. How we update the role of politicians and policies.

There is a tendency to be shown at a certain pace, in a certain, limited, very immediate way, but there is also an expectation that I felt it was important and responsible to interrupt, which had to do with the fact that – whether we like it or not – this glorification of the presidential couple serves or can be seen as a kind of model couple.

And in that sense, it seemed to me that questioning that a little or talking about it, sometimes not everything is criticism, but critical thinking, when there is critical thinking one puts things on the table, and putting on the table the question – for example – of whether a President always has to be heterosexual, or if there can be a presidential couple or an environment of the President that is super political, if that is possible and what happens when that is challenged.

We have many examples of other strong female politicians who are described as if they were men. The trolling on social media has to do with the fact that they must actually be men. And in order to attack them they have to be transformed into men. There is also a fixation on how gender roles are distributed in politics. The man is as if he has all the masculine characteristics to have his leadership. In the case of the First Ladies, the expectation is that it’s offset by this sweet, charitable, half-virginal part because she’s not necessarily attractive, like moderate, she’s got some … how did you say to me at the beginning? Well, I thought a lot about whether or not I was going to take on this role, so I was told all sorts of things, especially that the best way to be First Lady was to be discreet, in every way. And I found all those discussions fascinating.

Pressenza: How do you explain this gesture beyond the role itself, which is to assume and inhabit a charge in order to leave it and to dismantle it, to empty it?

Irina Karamanos: I think that it is probably not so common to leave power at the end of the mission, because other positions – there is none like it – there is no other that is given an office in the Palacio de La Moneda for being the partner, in this case of the President, and also has an institutional construction that is like a work, not paid, but ad-honorem and charitable in everything that this woman has to do.

It is probably not very common to be in power, or to have power and then leave it at the end of a plan. Instead of saying “but if you can do so many things from here”. What I’ve been told a million times. “You could have created a project, you could have left a stamp, what is your stamp? And I said: it’s not personal, so I don’t want to leave my stamp. In fact, I don’t want to reinforce the fact that this figure leaves “stamps” either. Without being inconsiderate of history, however, because of course there are moments in which various figures who have occupied this role have built projects in response to emergencies, which at the time could not necessarily be supplied by portfolios.

Today, all the ambits that I was requested to address, to work in, to lead, were only ambits already linked to portfolios and issues. In this sense, it seems to me that this is just an update in which the desirable thing would be, and this is what we will be proposing, that the institutionalisation of the President’s partner should not be anchored in the Presidency.

That is what disappears. But what continues is what is the new scenario for a person that occupy this position. In other words, the next President may have a person at her or his side, on an affective level, who is very close to her or him and who will probably also have some public exposure depending on how that person regulates him or her. But I believe that this will form part of how the cultural vision of that person will change.

I think it will change. In my case, I entered this role as if I were entering a circle, then we did archaeology of all the walls of the circle and then we dismantled that circle to say: a subject in politics can also indicate, pay attention, draw attention, make visible and then modify if it is considered necessary, according to democratic criteria, that this improves the instrument.

This, this militant exercise, is a chapter, a mission, and then what I do not cease to be is neither a subject nor a militant. So now another stage will come, and I hope it will be the same for the next person. That their subject can also deploy the changes that are identified, but already at a cultural level. That is to say, it can be at a discursive level, etc., but not anchored in the institution.

The video was recorded and edited by Aníbal Feres.