Citizens of Memory

Affect, Representation, and Human Rights in Postdictatorship Argentina

Silvia R. Tandeciarz

Citizens of Memory explores efforts at recollection in post-dictatorship Argentina and the hoped-for futures they set in motion. The material, visual, narrative, and pedagogical interventions it analyzes address the dark years of state repression (1976-1983) while engaging ongoing debates about how this traumatic past should be transmitted to future generations. Two theoretical principles structure the book’s approach to cultural recall: the first follows from an understanding of memory as a social construct that is always as much about the past as it is of the present; the second from the observation that what distinguishes memory from history is affect. These principles guide the study of iconic sites of memory in the city of Buenos Aires; photographic essays about the missing and the dictatorship’s legacies of violence; documentary films by children of the disappeared that challenge hegemonic representations of seventies’ militancy; a novel of exile that moves recollection across national boundaries; and a human rights education program focused on memory. Understanding recollection as a practice that lends coherence to disparate forces, energies, and affects, the book approaches these spatial, visual, and scripted registers as impassioned narratives that catalyze a new attentiveness within those they hail. It suggests, moreover, that by inciting deep reflection and an active engagement with the legacies of state violence, interventions like these can help advance the cause of transitional justice and contribute to the development of new political subjectivities invested in the construction of less violent futures.

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 352 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61148-845-6 • Hardback • November 2017 • $147.00 • (£113.00)

978-1-61148-846-3 • eBook • November 2017 • $139.50 • (£108.00)

Series: Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Subjects: History / Latin America / Central America, Social Science / World / Latin America, Social Science / Culture

Citizens of Memory

Affect, Representation, and Human Rights in Postdictatorship Argentina

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Citizens of Memory explores efforts at recollection in post-dictatorship Argentina and the hoped-for futures they set in motion. The material, visual, narrative, and pedagogical interventions it analyzes address the dark years of state repression (1976-1983) while engaging ongoing debates about how this traumatic past should be transmitted to future generations. Two theoretical principles structure the book’s approach to cultural recall: the first follows from an understanding of memory as a social construct that is always as much about the past as it is of the present; the second from the observation that what distinguishes memory from history is affect. These principles guide the study of iconic sites of memory in the city of Buenos Aires; photographic essays about the missing and the dictatorship’s legacies of violence; documentary films by children of the disappeared that challenge hegemonic representations of seventies’ militancy; a novel of exile that moves recollection across national boundaries; and a human rights education program focused on memory. Understanding recollection as a practice that lends coherence to disparate forces, energies, and affects, the book approaches these spatial, visual, and scripted registers as impassioned narratives that catalyze a new attentiveness within those they hail. It suggests, moreover, that by inciting deep reflection and an active engagement with the legacies of state violence, interventions like these can help advance the cause of transitional justice and contribute to the development of new political subjectivities invested in the construction of less violent futures.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 352 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61148-845-6 • Hardback • November 2017 • $147.00 • (£113.00)

978-1-61148-846-3 • eBook • November 2017 • $139.50 • (£108.00)

Series: Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Subjects: History / Latin America / Central America, Social Science / World / Latin America, Social Science / Culture

Author

Silvia R. Tandeciarz is Alfred Ritter Term professor of modern languages and literatures at the College of William and Mary.

Table of Contents

A Note on Translation
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
OneMaking Space for Recollection
TwoMnemonic Hauntings: Photography as Art of the Missing
ThreeArchaeologies of Identity: The After Generation’s Archival Returns
FourPurgatorio as Memoryscape: Literature, Exile, and the Project of Transnational Justice
FiveAffective Transmissions: Toward a Pedagogy of Human Rights
Bibliography
About the Author
Index