MemoSur/MemoSouth: Memory, Commemoration and Trauma in Post-Dictatorship Argentina and Chile

The dictatorships of Chile and Argentina lasted from 1973 to 1989 and from 1976 to 1983, respectively. The two countries have thus long since entered the time of commemoration and of a new politics of memory. How, though, to remember and commemorate trauma as a political body, without reducing memory and commemoration to political calculation? New social movements have proposed a different sociability of mourning (one is not supposed to dance at funerals…), a new politics and culture of affect. Social media allow us to remember traumas that were never experienced first-hand. More than ever, memory is mediated by technology. This volume examines such matters in a series of essays covering the centres of detention, museums and memory sites, film, documentary, television, theatre, fiction and the press, LGBT and other testimonies, education, accusatory practices, the politics of memory and mourning, and the Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo. They deal with the memory, commemoration and trauma of the Pinochet and March 1976 coups, and of the Falklands-Malvinas war in an exploration of post-dictatorship Argentina and Chile. The result of a European Union-funded project involving academics, war veterans and politicians from Argentina, Chile and Europe, the volume will be of interest to scholars of history, memory studies, post-conflict studies, feminist and LGBT studies, cultural and theatre studies, and trauma studies.