Collective Memory and the Language of Human Rights

Abstract

The democratization that followed the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976Argentina ( -1983 has been influenced by human rights organizations' relentless work to bring about truth and justice regarding the consequences of state terrorism and to keep the memory of that period alive. These efforts frame the discursive context in which human rights violations, including torture, are interpreted in contemporary Argentina. Argentine interviewees from across the political spectrum condemn torture, but the language and frames they use and the narratives surrounding political events vary. These accounts expose the conflicted terrain of memory making and the ambivalences and contradictions that permeate the construction of a torture-rejecting culture.La democratización que vino después de la última dictadura militar en la Argentina (1976Argentina ( -1983 ha sido influenciada por el trabajo incesante de las organizaciones de derechos humanos para lograr que se establezca la verdad y se haga justicia sobre las consecuencias del terrorismo de estado y para mantener la memoria sobre ese periodo viva. Estos esfuerzos enmarcan el contexto discursivo a través del cual las violaciones de los derechos humanos, entre ellas la tortura, son interpretadas en la Argentina contemporánea. Las personas entrevistadas en Argentina, quienes atraviesan el espectro político, condenan la tortura. Sin embargo, el lenguaje y los esquemas que usan y las narrativas sobre los acontecimientos políticos varían. Estos relatos exponen el terreno conflictivo de la construcción de la memoria y las ambivalencias y contradicciones que permean la construcción de una cultura de rechazo hacia la tortura.

Deserving victimhood: kinship, emotions and morality in contemporary politics

“…The public staging of the restitution of Ignacio's identity was also a radical novelty in terms of the place that relatives and the State could legitimately occupy within Argentina's national political space. Ignacio 1994, among many other actions (Sutton 2015). In this process, the State has insisted on the need to specify the criteria used to identify those subjects wishing to be considered beneficiaries of these different policies, the victims.…”