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Abstract
This essay focuses on the emergence of a non-normative lineage of mourning in the wake of Argentina's last dictatorship (1976–1983). It looks at Mi vida después (Lola Arias, 2009), a play based on the real stories of six actors who were born during the dictatorship. By challenging Marianne Hirsch's idea of postmemory, forged in order to address the experiences of the second generation of survivors, I consider how personal testimonies can travel off the stage to build new affiliations in the present. I suggest that Mi vida después offers an expanded machine for the exploration of memory that also includes the bodies of the audience. Among the testimonies, I focus on the story of two non-biological siblings: the actor Vanina Falco and Juan Cabandié, the son of a murdered activist couple who was abducted from ESMA by Luis Falco, a police officer working for the military. I address how Vanina relates to her father-appropriator, recently condemned to eighteen years of imprisonment. In so doing, I show how the performance of blood can help to conceive a broader idea of being affected by violence. Ultimately, I suggest that traumatic pasts are also attires that can be adopted in the context of spectatorship.
Notes
1 CitationJacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, London, 1998), p. 2. Derrida's emphasis.
2 The presidential speech was conducted on September 25, 2003. In the original: “Somos los hijos e hijas de las Madres y Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo”, accessed December 13, 2010; http://constitucionweb.blogspot.com/2010/02/discurso-de-asuncion-de-presidente.html.
3 In 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court declared the nullity of the so-called “laws of impunity” and the prosecutions of military personnel were allowed once again.
4 CitationLauren Berlant, The Female Complaint (Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2008), vii.
5 For an expanded analysis of Lola Arias' work see CitationC. Sosa, “Lola Arias: Expanding the Real” in No More Drama (Dublin: Project Press, 2011).
6 CitationMarianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Post-memory”, Poetics Today, 29.1 (2008): 103–128, 107.
7 Hirsch, “The Generation of Post-memory”, 107.
8 All the quotations of the play included in this chapter have been taken from My Life After (2009), by CitationLola Arias, translated by Daniel Tunnard (unpublished). Thanks to the director for permission to quote from the text.
9 Arias, My Life After, n.p.
10 Arias, My Life After, n.p.
11 CitationWalter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, in Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt, trans. H. Zorn (London: Pimlico, 1968), 246.
12 See Paula Giménez, “A la izquierda del padre”, Página 12, accessed December 3, 2011; http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/soy/1-1283-2010-03-21.html.
13 See CitationHugo Vezzetti, Pasado y presente. Guerra, dictadura y sociedad en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, Siglo XX1, 2002) and CitationNicolás Casullo, Pensar entre épocas: Memorias, sujetos y crítica cultural (Buenos Aires: Norma, 2004).
14 CitationBeatriz Sarlo, Tiempo Pasado. Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2005), pp. 134–5 (my translation).
15 A group of descendants of the disappeared is trying to incorporate the category of “niño desaparecido-detenido” within the current legal framework, as promoted by Angela Urondo, leader of this initiative. See CitationVictoria Ginzberg, “Por primera vez el Estado me está devolviendo algo”, Página 12, accessed October 12, 2011, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-178549-2011-10-09.html.
16 Hirsch, “The Generation of Post-memory”, 107.
17 CitationJens Andermann “Returning to the Site of Horror: the Recovery of Clandestine Concentration Camps in Argentina” in Theory, Culture and Society, 29, 1 (2012): 81.
18 In fact, Marianne Hirsch herself invites to consider this possibility. See CitationM. Hirsch, “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory,” Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 12.
19 Andermann, “Returning to the Site of Horror: the Recovery of Clandestine Concentration Camps in Argentina,” 82.
20 CitationRidout, Nicholas, “Welcome to the Vibratorium,” Senses & Society, 3 (2008): 222.
21 In the original: “Si la sangre fuera un mandato yo estaría condenada. No pienso si mi padre se va a morir en el cárcel, no me importa, no pienso en su muerte, para mí es algo menor. Es el cargar con ese vínculo que no se puede volver atras, y por más que yo haya generado un corte y lo sienta ajeno, todavía es un gran dolor. En algún punto es una orfandad de otra índole. No es una orfandad que me haga sentir mal o sola, porque me faltan esos vinculos fundantes, para nada. Es como esto, ves? [muestra una herida en el brazo] a los 8 años atravesé un vidrio y salve mis tendones de milagro. Por supuesto que ya no duele, pero está [golpea el brazo]. Es una tremenda herida. A veces tengo que maquillarmela. Bueno, con mi padre es más o menos lo mismo. (…) Me encantaría tener otro padre. Por más que suene duro y un poco incorrecto, es la verdad. Honrar a mi padres es justamente ser lo que soy [ríe]. Yo soy esto y si a papá no le gusta, problema de papá. Y a mi papá tampoco me gusta y yo elijo ser yo” (my translation). See BBC Mundo, March 25, 2010, accessed November 7, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/america_latina/2010/02/100126_mandamientos_honraras_padres_mz.shtml.
22 CitationAhmed, Sara, The Promise of Happiness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 141.
23 In the original: “Cuando se desató lo de Juan tuve una reacción epidérmica peor que cuando tuve que enfrentar a mi padre por lo de mi decisión sexual” (my translation). See CitationPaula Giménez, “A la izquierda del Padre”, Página 12, March 19, 2010; accessed December 3, 2011, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/soy/1-1283-2010-03-21.html.
24 CitationButler, “Remarks on ‘Queer Bonds’,” GLQ, 17. 2-3 (2011): 384.
25 CitationDiana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2003), 175.
26 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 217.
27 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 112.
28 By January 2012, the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo recovered 105 abducted children.
29 CitationJoshua Weiner and Damon Young, “Queer Bonds”, GLQ, 17. 2-3 (2011): 223.
30 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 114.
31 See CitationVictoria Ginzberg, “Una condena apropiada”, Página 12, May 18, 2011; accessed December 4, 2011, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-168409-2011-05-18.html.
32 Arias, My Life After (2008), n.p.