Chapter 11 - Memories of Violence: Literature and Transitional Justice in Argentina

Summary

Literature has historically played an important role as witness-bearer to massacres and incidents of mass violence, especially when other forms of documentation have been missing. But today, when the media and new information and communication technologies give us immediate access to almost all dramatic events in the world, there is less incitement for literature to assume that role.

More than just supplementing authentic testimonies, fiction can add an important dimension to the interrogation and understanding of the horror, as demonstrated by the case of Argentina in the processing of the experience of the military dictatorship (1976–82). Whereas the testimonial narratives were a prime source of knowledge about the crimes of the Dictatorship, and served a crucial purpose as evidence in the judicial process, these testimonies are not more reliable than other sources when it comes to occurrences that preceded the Dictatorship or that were not related to the repression. Memory recurs to simplified narrative forms that tend to replace analysis. In order to understand, the imagination has to distance itself from the subjective memory and become reflective. Therefore, literary fiction may, paradoxically, present the most accurate images of the traumatic recent past and of its fabric of ideas and experiences

The maturity of memory (and ‘postmemory’) is also a significant factor. Unlike news reports, witness testimonies, and other documents, the literary text may sometimes reveal its historical/ethnographic value only in retrospect. It appears as prophetic, as forecasting the future. Yet, it often requires a long ‘incubation time’. The literary interpretation of historical events and social processes may need a distance in time of 30 or 40 years.

CONCEPTUAL REPERTOIRE

After the trauma of state-perpetrated violence, the process of transitional justice often does not begin until long after the events occurred, if at all. Both during conflict and in the transitional phase of truth-seeking and reconciliation, formal mechanisms, such as trials or truth commissions, give most weight to eyewitness reports, testimonies and other forms of documentation in conveying the impact of events. Yet, as the chapters by Walker and Lopez in this volume suggest, such formal mechanisms may be ill-equipped to address more intangible forms of moral justice. In this chapter, I argue that literary fiction is one way through which the impact of traumatic events can be understood, and that these kinds of narratives may help in achieving a sense of moral justice.