Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Introduction To "Citizens Of Memory: Affect, Representation, And Human Rights In Postdictatorship Argentina", Silvia Tandeciarz

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

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 …