The most recent dictatorships in Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990) were also the most violent, characterised by the clandestine arrest, torture, murder, and disappearance of thousands of each country’s citizens. Given this extraordinary brutality, the early years of the transition to democracy were experienced as moments of liberation. Nonetheless, they were also periods of political compromise, wilful silence and official forgetting. In this social context, the cultural field played a crucial role in defining and sustaining demands for ‘memoria, verdad, y justicia’. In this module, students will analyse a range of literary and cinematic texts from each country which sublimate political demands and psychological trauma into art, and undertake the tasks of mourning and delivering justice that were denied elsewhere. In this way, students will learn about such topics as the politics of memory and memorialisation, the interrelation between human rights and artistic movements, and the generational, political, and artistic divides between those involved in memory labour in Argentina and Chile.

The module aims to:

enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of transition to democracy and the politics of memory, memorialisation, and mourning in Argentina and Chile;
	explore the ways in which writers and filmmakers critically reassess dictatorship, utilising literature and film publicly to sustain demands for memory, truth and justice;
	enhance students’ knowledge of the ways in which artists define and shape debates over the legacies of state terrorism in their work;
	cultivate skills and aptitudes of close (con)textual analysis in oral presentations and in written work.
Upon completion of the module, students will be able to:

demonstrate knowledge of the transition to democracy in Argentina and Chile, and the historical development of memory discourse in those same countries;
	critically examine a range of literary texts, including complex and experimental works, which imaginatively interrogate dictatorships and their legacies;
	demonstrate awareness of the ways in which art and politics are intertwined in post-dictatorial societies, and how artistic works contribute to the development of memory and human rights discourse;
	engage in close reading and critical analysis of primary and secondary sources (including materials written in academic and regional forms of Spanish) which address these themes.
Bibliography:

Primary Texts:

SELECTION FROM:

Eduardo Pavlovsky, Potestad (1985) [Theatre]

Ariel Dorfman La muerte y la doncella (1992) [Theatre]

Luis Puenzo, La historia oficial (1985) [Film]

Lita Stantic, Un muro de silencio (1993) [Film]

Patricio Guzmán Chile, la memoria obstinada (1997) [Film]

Comparative analysis of ‘El siluetazo’, ‘Los escraches’ and other performative protests

Silvio Caiozzi Fernando ha vuelto (1998) [Film]

Roberto Bolaño Estrella distante (1996) [Prose]

Marcelo Cohen El oído absoluto (1997) [Prose]

Raúl Zurita INRI (2003) [Poetry]

Diamela Eltit Los vigilantes (1994) [Prose]

Pablo Larraín, Post Mortem (2010) [Film]

Albertina Carri Los rubios (2003) [Film]

Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovik El astuto mono Pinochet contra La Moneda de los cerdos (2004) [Film]

Jonathan Perel El predio (2010) [Film]

Felix Bruzzone Los topos (2008) [Prose]

Sebastián Russo, La parva muerte, o la memoria de los otros (2018) [Prose]

Select Secondary Reading:

Avelar, Idelber, The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)

Bell, Vikki, ‘Between Documentality and Imagination: Five Theses on Curating the Violent Past’, Memory Studies, 11:2 (2018), pp.137-55.

Bell, Vikki, The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina (New York: Routledge, 2014)

Blejmar, Jordana, Playful Memories: The Autofictional Turn in Post-Dictatorship Argentina (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

Crenzel, Emilio A., Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of Nunca más (New York: Routledge, 2012)

Dove, Patrick, ‘Tonalities of Literature in Transition: The World of the End of the World, or Marcelo Cohen's El oído absoluto’, CR: The New Centennial Review, 4:2 (2004), pp.239-67.

Epps, Brad, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Bones: Memory, Emotion, and Pedagogy in Patricio Guzmán’s Chile, la memoria obstinada and Nostalgia de la luz’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 26:4 (2016), pp.1-20

Geraghty, Niall HD, ‘Sonorous Memory in Jonathan Perel’s El predio (2010) and Los murales (2011)', Memory Studies (2018) https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018790120

Geraghty, Niall HD, The Polyphonic Machine: Capitalism, Political Violence, and Resistance in Contemporary Argentine Literature (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

Gomez-Barris, Macarena, Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)

King, John, ‘Breaching the Walls of Silence: Lita Stantic's Un muro de silencio’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 20:1 (1995), pp.43-53.

Lessa, Francesca and Druliolle, Vincent (eds.), The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

Longoni, Ana and Bruzzone, Gustavo A. (eds.), El Siluetazo (Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2008)

Lorenz, Federico G. and Winn, Peter (eds.), No hay mañana sin ayer: batallas por la memoria histórica en el Cono Sur (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2015)

Maguire, Geoffrey, The Politics of Postmemory: Violence and Victimhood in Contemporary Argentine Culture (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

Masiello, Francine, The Art of Transition Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001)

Ros, Ana, The Post-Dictatorship Generation in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay: Collective Memory and Cultural Production (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Richard, Nelly, Latencias y sobresaltos de la memoria inconclusa (Chile 1990-2015) (Córdoba, Argentina: Eduvim, 2017)

Sarlo, Beatriz, Tiempo pasado: cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2005)

Sosa, Cecilia, Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina's Dictatorship: The Performances of Blood (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2014)