ABSTRACT
This chapter theorises storytelling as a social practice to further explain our views about identity and how it is constructed in discourse. We debate the growing importance of studying space in relation to narrative as a counterbalance to the almost exclusive stress on time in narrative studies. We argue that the notion of chronotope allows for a fresh understanding of the connectedness between space, time, and identity in human experience. This theoretical approach sustains our study of the chronotopic identities in the narratives of indigenous Mapuche migrants from their communities in the south to Santiago, the capital of Chile. From a socio-contructionist approach (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012) the analysis reveals the significant role that the ‘chronotope of the south’ plays in the negotiation of Mapuche ethnic identity in urban contexts, a finding that can be regarded as liminal to society given their status as perpetual outsiders in the places that they have been destined to occupy.
