The HauntedNomos: Activist-Artists and the (Im)possible Politics of Memory in Transitional Argentina

Abstract

The article considers the role that contemporary visual art and activist-artists have played in transitional Argentina, beginning from the premise that they might be understood as involved in the staging of a wide-ranging shift implied by the term transition. We have chosen three points of entry into this exploration, discussed in three sections: first, the debates around the future of the building Escuela de Mechanica de la Armada (ESMA) in Buenos Aires, which was used as a clandestine detention and extermination center during the dictatorship (1976–83); secondly, the memorial project that is El Parque de la Memoria, which is still under construction in Buenos Aires; and, thirdly, the reexhibition of visual artworks from the period of the dictatorship brought together as the group show Cuerpo y Materia (2006), curated by María Teresa Constantin as part of the public marking of the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup. Drawing on the sociolegal perspective of Robert Cover, we consider these sites as engaging questions of memory, temporality, and membership that are both normative and, potentially, world-making in his sense. It is argued that the aesthetic, as a register that does not (wish to) articulate its demands on law in the latter's terms, nevertheless critiques and calls on law insofar as these sites (re)mark the present against (im)possible Justice. In the relations between the absent bodies of the disappeared, the desires of the “social” body and the abstract regulative body of the law, it is the “liveliness” of the haunted nomos that kindles hope that in conjuring with ghosts, people will continue to contest, to propose, and to reconsider their commitments in the pursuit of Justice.

Documenting Dictatorship: Writing and Resistance in Chile's Vicaría de la Solidaridad

“…This is the 'nomos' as Robert Cover (1993) described it, the normative liveliness of a society. In other words, activities such as the installation of an art exhibition are also 'to do with' justice (Bell and Di Paolantonio, 2009). If we recall here Derrida's distinction (between Justice and justice), we might regard them as activities that are invitations to dwell within the 'incalculability' of justice.…”

Haunting and transitional justice: On lives, landscapes and unresolved pasts

“…11 For advocates of Menem’s decree, the building was not only a reminder of the past, but also triggered a demand in the present – how will you live with this unsettling presence in your midst? (Bell and Di Paolantonio, 2009). Yet, linking arguments in favour of the preservation of commemorative sites with the work of human rights, Menem’s proposal was contested by a number of human rights groups, who protested that the past cannot simply be obliterated.…”

“…Yet, linking arguments in favour of the preservation of commemorative sites with the work of human rights, Menem’s proposal was contested by a number of human rights groups, who protested that the past cannot simply be obliterated. Rather, and reflecting Derrida’s call to justice, they argued that the way to live with ghosts is not to destroy their haunts, but to give ghosts their proper place in the future, in order that they might inform, abstractly, the post-conflict landscape (Bell and Di Paolantonio, 2009).…”

“…Yet, it is not only individual lives that have been scarred by the conflict. As Bell and Di Paolantonio (2009) argue, landscape and physical structures ‘hold’ memories, conjuring up and housing spectres of the past. These dynamics are explored under the heading of ‘The Haunting of Landscape’.…”

Truth Commission Discourse and the Aesthetics of Reconciliation

“…justice and art, 59 and reconciliation representations. 60 Other examples include: Afghanistan's new film industry, 61 activist art in Argentina, 62 Northern Ireland's installation art, 63 the handicraft workshops of Chile, 64 the photographic captures of victims in Guatemala, 65 Graffiti art in Libya, 66 dramatic productions in Peru, 67 and the Pan African Dance Festival in Rwanda. 68 The arts have come to play a central role in moving reconciliation beyond the boundaries of truth commissions and criminal tribunals: cultural activity produces new political subjectivities in new relations to one another.…”