Gender, Death and Resistance; Facing the Ethical Vacuum

Irreconcilable Differences

“…These testimonies and others were used by some pioneering women scholars in the 1980s and 1990s to theorize the relation between authoritarianism, political violence, and violence against women, among them Ximena Bunster (1985), Jean Franco (1992), Julieta Kirkwood (1990 [1986]), and Teresa Valdés (1988; Valdés and Weinstein, 1993) and women associated with Latin American Institute of Mental Health and Human Rights (Agger and Jensen, 1997; Lira, 1994; Lira and Piper, 1996; among others). Bunster (1985: 297) reports that torture was brutally “feminized” in Chile—that women were tortured both because of their own political beliefs and to extract information about the whereabouts of those close to them—and argues that “the more generalized and diffused female sexual enslavement through the patriarchal state has been crystallized and physically literalized through the military state as torturer.” As scholarship on gender and political violence has moved into the twenty-first century there has been a steady stream of social science texts on areas affected by state violence and civil war, such as South Africa, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Peru, and Central America, and on the relation between gender/sexual violence and transitional justice at both the local and the international level (Boesten, 2012; Edwards, 2011; Mantilla, 2007; Ni Aoláin, 2009; Ni Aoláin, Haynes, and Cahn, 2011; Ross, 2003; Sharrat, 2011).…”

Double Binds: Latin American Women's Prison Memories

“…It is understandable that women narrators of prison memoirs do not want to dwell publicly on their experiences. As Franco notes, first‐person accounts of torture and rape tend to be “laconic and euphemistic,” and women in particular seem “ashamed of talking about their experiences.” Indeed, they tend not to elaborate even when giving testimony against their captors (Franco 1992, 110). Rather than revealing emotions or pain, they write “to tell the truth” about their country's repression and, in so doing, to regain the voice they partially lost during captivity.…”

“…It is here that what Delbo calls deep memory emerges to trouble the prisoner and to challenge her strategies for survival. Franco notes that Partnoy's narrator responds to this loss by mothering other prisoners and even derives her strength from this role (Franco 1992, 11). Yet the narrators do not speak much about their children.…”

“…She explains that the military based its understanding of masculinity on the ability to inflict pain on others and that the male‐dominated opposition groups maintained a similar belief in a dichotomy of the masculine/feminine. Prison guards reinforced their sense of masculine power by “feminizing” their male opponents: making them wear dresses, mocking the size of their penises, taunting the Jews for their circumcisions, and focusing the torture on their genitals (Franco 1992, 104–18). They also singled out women prisoners for special torture based on sadistic sexual fantasies: stripping and beating, rape, and forced miscarriage being some of the most common.…”

Piecing Memories Together after State Terror and Policies of Oblivion in Uruguay: The Female Political Prisoner's Testimonial Project (1997–2004)

“…My analysis of the MPA project builds upon prior research which suggested gender differences between experiences of repression (Franco, 1992). I argue that the women members of MPA had to confront their suppressed experiences of state repression by engaging in a distinctly gendered 'imaginative remaking' of their lost world and emotional connections (Franco, 1992, p. 112).…”