Stories of Memory / Memory in Stories: Remembrance and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Argentine Cultural Production

Abstract

This dissertation examines contemporary cultural production (mainly literature, film, and visual arts) by self-identified Jewish Argentine artists. In my research, I seek to analyze the different and varied ways memory and identity are formed and reflected in works of art produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries within this community and how these contested categories differ in art produced in previous cultural production. I pay special interest to the events that marked Argentina during the last dictatorship (1976-1983) and how those events are depicted in the art of those who lived through it, utilizing either their own memory or second-generation postmemory. I also delve into the role of transmission from generation from generation and how multiple identities evolve and transform in the Jewish community as time goes by in Argentina. One more aspect I consider is the gender variable and how it is reflected in the aforementioned multi-layered identity, as well as how the role of transmission of memory is regarded. I contend that analyzing the ways identity and memory are utilized and reflected in contemporary art allow for a deeper revision of recent history and memory that, ultimately, demand an evocative compromise with the human sense of worth, as well as the human conciliation with what lies behind and ahead. Employing memory as an accepted fallible substance that connects past, present, and future, works as a demand of the conservation of certain sensibility without providing illusory neutrality and without abandoning the attempt to confront established interpretations and narratives.