Suchergebnisse

In 1984, eight-year-old Paula Logares was called into a judge's chambers and was told the man and woman she lived with were not her parents. Her parents had been disappeared during the dirty war, and now, through her blood, scientists would be able to return her to her birth family. Paula, thus, became the first "stolen" child in Argentina to be identified via the incipient technology of DNA identification. With this forensic first, DNA identification has emerged as a central tool of good governance the world round. From routine crime fighting to international criminal tribunals, DNA plays a crucial role in attempts to reckon with crimes of the body. As an alternative origin for forensic DNA, Argentina offers an early example of science emerging from social movements in the Global South. Drawing on twenty-seven months of fieldwork with family members, activists, and scientists, this article documents the ways in which DNA has emerged as a core site of subject formation for individuals and families affected by the terror of the dictatorship and for the Argentine nation-state, as it reckons with the legacies of repression. Through a feminist, postcolonial frame, I offer the concept of re(con)stitution as a way of attending to the forms of biocitizenship that emerge during times of humanitarian crisis and transitional justice. As a tool of reproductive governance, forensic DNA acts not only as a powerful disciplinary site of biocitizenship but also as a potential space to reimagine the social contract between the body, the public, and the state.

What is the impact of dictatorships on postdictatorial civil societies? Bottom-up theories suggest that totalitarian dictatorships destroy civil society while authoritarian ones allow for its development. Top-down theories of civil society suggest that totalitarianism can create civil societies while authoritarianism is unlikely to. This article argues that both these perspectives suffer from a one-dimensional understanding of civil society that conflates strength and autonomy. Accordingly we distinguish these two dimensions and argue that totalitarian dictatorships tend to create organizationally strong but heteronomous civil societies, while authoritarian ones tend to create relatively autonomous but organizationally weak civil societies. We then test this conceptualization by closely examining the historical connection between dictatorship and civil society development in Italy (a posttotalitarian case) and Spain da postauthoritarian one). Our article concludes by reflecting on the implications of our argument for democratic theory, civil society theory, and theories of regime variation.

This article examines two approaches to postdictatorship cinema: trauma theory, which has been especially popular in reading this corpus, and semiotics, which has regained popularity in film analysis in general but is not often employed when analyzing postdictatorship films. The article claims that, though highly productive in the 1990s, trauma theory has become less fruitful after decades of continuous scholarship and after the emergence of administrations that have made the representation of the dictatorship the center of their public policies, such askirchnerismoin Argentina (2003–2015). While trauma theory yields ahistorical analyses, a semiotic approach that takes into account how indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs merge in the cinematic field allows for historical interpretations that are more adequate for reading postdictatorship films, especially after 2003. The article first outlines the main tenets of the two approaches (trauma theory and semiotics), then assesses their suitability for historical interpretation via a brief analysis ofAndrés no quiere dormir la siesta, a 2009 Argentine film on the country's last dictatorship.

Introduction: listening to silences -- Tortured silence and silenced torture in Eduardo Pavlovsky's Paso de dos -- Filling in the space of disappearance: Eric Stener Carlson's I remember Julia -- voices of the disappeared -- "The shape described by their absence": disappearance in Juan José Saer's La pesquisa -- Silencing the politics of identity: from Elsa Osorio's A veinte años, Luz to Telefe's Montecristo -- The memory of forgetting in Luisa Valenzuela's La travesía -- Fallout of the memory "boom": seeing and not-seeing the ex-ESMA in Jonathan Perel's El predio.

This article examines the relationship between space, memory, and the effects of Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985) presented in Luis Fernando Veríssimo's 2004 short story, A mancha ('The Stain'). Although simple in structure, the narrative touches upon complex themes in postdictatorship: engaging with past trauma and political differences that cut across family relationships, conflicting notions of betrayal, the urban processes associated with capitalism, and the commodification of memory itself. I argue that the 'stain' traced in A mancha goes beyond the normalised rhetoric of postdictatorial memory, as the narrative both maintains and traces marginalised subjectivities of postdictatorship through its engagement with material and discursive spatial production in Brazil.

Contends that the lack of voter turnout in Chile's 1997 election indicates a conscious rejection of the political system. Data from 90 unstructured interviews conducted 1996-1998 in several Santiago poblaciones (shantytowns) suggest that the institutionalization of Chilean political parties into a network of exclusionary institutions designed to protect a restricted democracy has, in fact, restricted their representative capacity, leading to a loss of grassroots legitimacy. This is seen to be tied closely to neoliberalism. Following an overview of the history & dynamics of the current party system, which reveals an authoritarian institutional legacy, attention turns to center-Left parties & grassroots perceptions from the poblaciones where such parties have enjoyed strong support. Focus is on the relations between parties, party militants, & poblacion residents to assess the impact of the macrolevel context of elite politics on local political mediation & party affiliation. Chile's party system is seen to have moved away from civil society toward the state, a function of the binomial electoral system. As a result, the organic link between party militants & grassroots activists has eroded, leading to growing dealignment, weakening party identification, & political alienation. In Chile's protected democracy, the political parties have shifted from representing the popular & working-class interests to supporting neoliberalism, thus undermining their own mobilizing & representative capacities. 3 Tables, 37 References. J. Zendejas