THE CONSTITUTIONAL MINOTAUR

Abstract

Constitutionalism, like Theseus’s feat in the Greek myth of the Minotaur, is an epic tale of foundational feat: a discursive tool that infuses a moment of creation with epic and legitimacy. The manifestations in Chile in October 2019 and the subsequent constituent process represent the discursive culmination of these ideas. Its failure marks the loss of faith constitutionalism’s ability to resolve the crisis of legitimacy in Chile. This outcome resembles Borges’ reinterpretation of the myth in his tale “The House of Asterion”, where the heroism of the Greek is stripped of its epic nature and presented as a vulgar rite. Reflecting on what went wrong in the Chilean constitutional process thus questions the founding myth of constitutionalism, shedding light on the tensions between dogmatic realism and political reality.