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This article is a preview of my forthcoming book, The Ghosts of Montes de Oca: Naked Life and the Medically Disappeared (University of North Carolina Press). It was presented as the 2014 Janey Lecture, at the New School for Social Research, New York, April 2014.
2019 •
Argentina of the seventies was marked by internal conflicts which exceeded those previously lived through in its entire political history. Inspired by the French May uprisings, the sermon of Pacem in Terris, the end of colonialism in countries in Africa and Asia, and the Cuban Revolution among other things, the Argentinians (many of whom were young professionals and university students) became guerrilla fighters, immersing themselves fully into the idea that social change based on the vindication of the dispossessed was possible. It did not take long for the media and society in general to convert these revolutionaries into the Other, into the monster that had to be destroyed (annihilated) so that it would not contaminate the rest of the population. As a consequence these individuals were persecuted and exterminated. The country welcomed this and the Church gave its blessing to the intelligence services and to the impeccable, honourable and distinguished armed forces who had acted as saviours, not only to the nation, but also to Western and Christian values. The return of democracy opened up the possibility to give a voice to that “monster” silenced during part of the decade of the seventies and part of the eighties. Testimonies of CONADEP (National Commission for the Disappearance of People) like the “Nunca más” and the first writings about the dictatorship, allowed the real monster of the so-called “dirty war” to be revealed. This literature, made up of thousands of testimonies, permitted the real monster to be unmasked. The defenders of the fatherland sprouted claws, horns and tails and even so, these images were not sufficient to describe the horror to which they subjected their victims: they created clandestine concentration camps in order to torture their victims to death, they trafficked the newborn children of the prisoners and they threw their still living victims from airplanes. The aim of my presentation will be to analyze by means of testimonies and literary works, the (re) presentation and (re) figuration of the monster “disguised as the human protector” within Argentinian reality of the so-called “dirty war”.
This article will investigate the process of confronting death in cases of the disappeared of the last military dictatorship in Argentina. Based on the exhumation and identification of the body of a disappeared person, the article will reflect on how the person's social situation can be reconfigured, causing structural changes within the family and other groups. This will be followed by a discussion of the reflections generated by the anthropologist during his or her interview process, as well as an investigation into the author's own experiences in the field. This intimate relationship between the anthropologist and death, through the inevitable contact that takes place 'among the bodies', causes resonances in the context both of exhuma-tions and of identifications in the anthropologist's wider fieldwork.
ecadernos CES. Special issue: “Endangered Citizenship: Crime, End of the World and Biopolitics in Postcolonial Literatures and Cinema”
Horror as Real and the Real as Horror: Ghosts of the Desaparecidos in Argentina2019 •
This article explores the fear of political otherness in Mariana Enríquez’s short story “The Inn” in which the author combines the reality of Argentine history with elements of the gothic horror style while maintaining a sharp focus on social criticism. “The Inn” blurs the lines between the reality of a not-so-distant past and elements of the supernatural to delve into an Argentine history scarred by the last dictatorship. This article seeks to examine the use of the figure of the desaparecido as representative of a politics of erasure of the political other that has been systematically censored and unacknowledged. It is also an examination of the re-membering and re-inscribing of the desaparecido as an intergenerational cultural exercise to counteract an institutionalized narrative of erasure and forgetting.
Research has corroborated that the repression of culture during the last Argentine dictatorship was systematically planned by the State. The aim was not only to eradicate what was considered dangerous “Marxist and thus subversive,” but also to impose what the Armed Forces considered true Christian values (country, family, private property). The presentation outlines the fear, humiliation, pain and impotence, as well as resistance and rebellion to censorship that authors, publishers, and librarians faced during the period known as the “Dirty War” (1976-1983). It also includes some personal experiences.
The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror
The Space of Disappearance: A Narrative Commons in the Ruins of Argentine State Terror2020 •
This article addresses a controversial debate raised by an asado-party, which was celebrated by the end of 2012 at the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), the main clandestine detention centre where almost 5,000 people were held captive and tortured during Argentina’s last dictatorship (1976-1983). In 2004, the former school was transformed into a “space of memory”. Drawing upon the asado episode, I consider which kind of practices of re-occupation former landscapes of death may allow. I first provide an overview of the interventions that took place at ESMA within the Kirchnerist period (2003-2015). Second, I bring into play some cultural productions of the new generations, as well as performances and philosophical ruminations regarding the asado as a main theme in the local culture. Finally, I put these materials in the larger context of memory politics to explore how food-reunions – and expanded tables-- might work as a public pathway for a collective digestion of grief. The question that is ultimately at stake is how to kindle alternative hospitalities and dialogues in landscapes marked by loss. Might the spectrum of activities that took place at the former ESMA during the Kirchnerist years suggest a new conviviality for the aftermath of violence?

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