This article attempts to address, from the theoretical field, the different approaches to "postmemory" that have emerged in Western culture since the 1990s. After mapping the genealogical origins of this term, paying attention to its transformations and to discussions that this category has prompted, we shall examine the formal issues that govern most of this kind of cultural productions. To this end we expose three examples that have been produced in very different artistic fields, periods, geographies, and traumatic pasts: Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman; Arqueología de la ausencia, a photographic project by the Argentinian Lucila Quieto; and Haciendo memoria, a short documentary by the Spanish Sandra Ruesga.
Key WordsPostmemory, generational memory, memory mediatisation, traumatic past, audiovisual culture, contemporary narratives.
ResumenEl presente artículo se propone abordar desde el ámbito teórico las distintas aproximaciones que desde los años noventa del pasado siglo se han hecho al concepto de la "posmemoria". Tras este repaso genealógico por los orígenes, transformaciones y debates que ha suscitado dicha categoría, se delinean las cuestiones formales que rigen la mayor parte las producciones culturales inspiradas por la posmemoria. Para tal fin se han seleccionado tres ejemplos que abarcan ámbitos artísticos, épocas, geografías y pasados traumáticos muy diversos: Maus, la novela gráfica de Art Spiegelman; Arqueología de la ausencia, el proyecto fotográfico de la argentina Lucila Quieto; y Haciendo memoria, un cortometraje documental de la española Sandra Ruesga.
Palabras clave1 La realización de este artículo se enmarca en el desarrollo del proyecto de investigación financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Subprograma Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento), "Memorias en segundo grado: Posmemoria de la guerra civil, el franquismo y la transición democrática en la sociedad española contemporánea" (Ref. CSO2013-41594-P).
Many Spanish film-makers who began their careers in the years immediately following the death of Franco felt the urgency to recover through their works all the freedoms that the repression and censorship of the forty years of the Franco regime had disrupted in such violent and radical ways. This was a moment of transition, in which some films emerged that finally dared to question the prevailing public opinion and proposed approaches to reality and national history that were decidedly unorthodox and polemical. Among this group of films, which included both documentary and fictional works, a number approached the hitherto interdicted themes of homosexuality, transsexuality and transvestism.
This article proposes to investigate how and why titles such as Cambio de sexo/Change of Sex (Aranda, 1976), El transexual/The Transsexual (Jara, 1977), Ocaña, retrat intermitent/Ocaña, an Intermittent Portrait (Pons, 1978) and Un hombre llamado Flor de Otoño/A Man Called Autumn Flower (Olea, 1978) came to stand as sites of transgression – that is, as ‘impertinent’ portraits – in a libertarian Spain. The eagerness of this transitional generation to make films based on previously prohibited themes was inevitably bound to face resistance from various quarters.
Memorias protésicas: Posmemoria y cine documental en la España contemporánea 1
Laia Quílez EsteveUniversitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona) laia.quilez@urv.cat Resumen Este artículo trata de aproximarse a la representación de la guerra civil española y el franquismo en el cine realizado por la generación de los nietos de las víctimas y supervivientes de ese turbulento capítulo de la historia. Mediante el análisis de tres documentales (Haciendo memoria, Nadar y Tierra encima) se intentará cartografiar los modos con los que estos jóvenes cineastas trabajan la memoria de esos años de represión y las cuestiones alrededor del terreno de la memoria, la historia y el lenguaje cinematográfico que plantean en sus metrajes.Palabras clave: Posmemoria, guerra civil, franquismo, cine documental
Prosthetic Memory: Postmemory and Documentary Film in Contemporary SpainAbstract This paper approaches the representation of the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship in the films directed by the generation of grandchildren of the victims and survivors of that turbulent chapter of history. By analyzing three documentaries (Haciendo memoria, Nadar y Tierra encima) we will try to map the ways in which these young filmmakers work the memory of those years of repression. We also address the way they reflect on memory, history and visual language.
This article analyses different narratives of memory used in commemorative Spanish documentaries. It first considers the state of the question of the relationship between documentary, history and memory and then examines television productions made in democratic Spain that have advocated either a hegemonic memory of the transition or a counter-memory of the recent past. The second part of the text focuses on two biographical documentaries: Bucarest, la memoria perdida, about the Communist leader Jordi Solé Tura, and Adolfo Suárez. Mi historia, which centres on the figure of the former prime minister. The article interprets these documentaries as narratives of memory that evoke the democratic transition in different ways.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.