Stigma, Trauma and the Social Forces Shaping Memory Transmission in Argentina

Main Article Content

Jill Stockwell

Abstract

Since the return to democratic rule in Argentina in 1983, competing claims about how the period of political and state violence of the 1970s and 1980s might be collectively remembered by the nation have caused deep political and societal divisions. This paper explores the personal memories of Argentine women from two ideologically-opposed groups—those on the political Left affected by military repression during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship and those on the political Right affected by the armed guerrilla violence predominantly in the years leading up to the 1976 military coup. In contemporary Argentina, the memories of enduring personal trauma which both groups of women carry are commonly perceived as unable to co-exist in a shared mnemonic space – as if remembering one history of violence is seen as an attempt to forget or violate the other history of violence and trauma.

Article Details

Section
Stigma and Exclusion in Cross-Cultural Contexts Special Issue January 2014 (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biography

Jill Stockwell, Swinburne University

Jill Stockwell is a PhD student involved with the Institute�s project Social Memory and Historical Justice: How Democratic Societies Remember and Forget the Victimisation of Minorities in the Past. Her principal focus is social memory and gender. Jill completed her Masters degree in Social Administration from the University of Queensland in 2001. She has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a Protection Delegate in Kosovo and the Republic of Congo, with Amnesty International as a Researcher in London and with other NGOs in Guatemala and East Africa. She most recently worked in Myanmar where she conducted HIV/AIDS behavioural research with at-risk groups and the general population.