Citizens of Memory

"Citizens of Memory explores efforts at recollection in postdictatorship Argentina and the hoped-for futures they set in motion. The material, visual, narrative, and pedagogical interventions it analyzes address the years of state repression (1976-1983) and ongoing debates about how this traumatic past should be transmitted to future generations. Two theoretical principles structure the book's approach to cultural recall: the first follows from an understanding of memory as a social construct that is always as much about the past as it is of the present; the second from the observation that what distinguishes memory from history is affect. Understanding recollection as a practice that lends coherence to disparate forces, energies, and affects, Silvia Tandeciarz argues that these interventions can help advance the cause of transitional justice and contribute to the development of new political subjectivities invested in the construction of less violent futures."--Page 4 of cover