Trauma, Taboo, and Truth-Telling: Listening to Silences in Postdictatorship Argentina (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780299307646)

Argentina's repressive 1976-83 dictatorship, during which an estimated thirty thousand people were "disappeared," prompted the postauthoritarian administrations and human rights groups to encourage public exposure of past crimes and traumas. Truth commissions, trials, and other efforts have aimed to break the silence and give voice to the voiceless. Yet despite these many reckonings, there are still silences, taboos, and unanswerable questions.
Nancy J. Gates-Madsen reads between the lines of Argentine cultural texts (fiction, drama, testimonial narrative, telenovela, documentary film) to explore the fundamental role of silence-the unsaid-in the expression of trauma. Her careful examination of the interplay between textual and contextual silences illuminates public debate about the meaning of memory in Argentina-which stories are being told and, more important, which are being silenced. The imposition of silence is not limited to the military domain or its apologists, she shows; the human rights community also perpetuates and creates taboos.

Author: Nancy J. Gates-Madsen
ISBN-10: 0299307646
ISBN-13: 9780299307646
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Language: English
Published: 07/10/2018
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.53d