Browsing by Subject "Memory Studies"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Haunted Objects: Spectral Testimony in the Southern Cone Post-Dictatorship
    (2014-06) Corbin, Megan
    This dissertation examines the role of the everyday, common object in relation to the human experience and capacity to give testimony--to communicate experiences of trauma, torture and suffering. In my research, I seek to bring together a number of subfields: theoretical interpretation of testimonial narratives, trauma theory, memory studies, spectral theory, and object-oriented philosophy, in order to "think with things" in my analysis of narratives emerging in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile (three of the countries that make up the area known as the Southern Cone) in what is called the "Post-Dictatorship" period. Basing my analysis on testimonial narratives written by survivors in Argentina, as well as interviews I conducted with former political prisoners in Chile and Uruguay, the first part of my project considers the important role material objects had for those who were imprisoned and survived torture and mistreatment during the dictatorships. I argue that these accounts demonstrate a reliance on the material world, meaning the prisoner/detainee during his/her detention used the secret possession of objects, along with acts of artistic creation, as a means of re-building and expressing a semblance of autonomous subjectivity and resisting the total destruction of his/her world. The second part of my project moves to the period of the post-dictatorship, exploring how this changed relationship to the material world shapes the creation of new narratives that seek to remember the period of the dictatorship and transmit this information to society in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay today. Examining the narrative logic of texts, museum expositions, and artistic endeavors that use objects from the dictatorship period to teach about the traumatic past, I examine how the material of the past (prison craftwork, corporal remains, and the former belongings of the disappeared) is endowed with a testimonial capacity and used to effect change in the present, communicating the atrocities of the past in order to ensure that human rights abuses never occur again in the future.
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    Literatura, memoria y medioambiente en Chile. Una experiencia ecocrítica Literature, memory and environment in Chile. An ecocritic experience
    (2019-09) Palma Zuniga, Eva
    During Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1973 – 1989) human rights were systematically violated. Thousands of people were tortured, killed or disappeared. In spite of the substantial relevance and tremendous impact the massive loss of human lives signifies for a whole nation, there is another consequence that should be taken into consideration, and that is the loss of the land and the violence executed against nature. Large extensions of natural spaces were wiped out during Pinochet’s dictatorship and continue suffering the aggression of democratic governments and industrial activity. Along with the disappearance of the land, also were destroyed many other forms of life, including animals, insects, birds, plants, trees, and furthermore, native communities and their active cultural traditions were intervened. This interdisciplinary work attempts to explore the links between the study fields of environment, memory and identity studies, in order to decentralize the debate from the anthropocentric view, and therefore, explore new contributions that might come from the more than human world. Converging the disciplines of environment, memory and identity will also shed light on the human rights debate in Chile, by taking it beyond the Pinochet’s dictatorship frame (where mainly this discussion remains). Even though it is true that dictatorship changed the course of Chile’s history, it also changed the way the individual started connecting with the environment. On the one hand, the land turned into a witness of resistance amidst the new dictatorial reality, and on the other hand, became the source of natural resources that would give Chile the economic growth. Therefore, a turn to a more ecocentric perspective in these fields, will bring the possibility to discover new voices and sources of memory, that go beyond the spoken word. That is to say, a more ecocentric perspective will provide the possibility of the language of nature as a voiceless witness of the past.