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Fragile Memory, Shifting Impunity is an interdisciplinary study of commemorative sites related to human rights violations committed primarily during dictatorial rule in Argentina (1976-1983) and Uruguay (1973-1985). Taking as a departure point the 'politics of memory' - a term that acknowledges memory's propensity for engagement beyond the cultural sphere - this study shifts the focus away from exclusively aesthetic and architectural readings of marches, memorials and monuments to instead analyse their emergence and transformation in post-dictatorship Argentina and Uruguay. This book incorporates the role of state and societal actors and conflicts underpinning commemorative processes into its analysis, reading the sites within shifting contexts of impunity to explore their relationship to memory, truth seeking and justice in the long aftermath of dictatorship.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction: Contentious Presents, Unsettled Pasts - Memory Matters: Towards a Definition of the Commemorative Site - A Tale of Two Transitions: Shifting Impunity in the Long Aftermath of State Repression - Of Memorials and Victims: Liminal Sites of Homage in Buenos Aires and Montevideo - Returning to the Scene of the Crime(s): Transformative Trajectories of Sites of State Terrorism - Transitory Transmissions of Memory in Argentina and Uruguay: The Ebbs and Flows of the Escrache and its Recent Iterations - Conclusion: Fragile Memory, Shifting Impunity: Fissures, Entrepreneurs and Sites in Dialogue.
About the author
Cara Levey is Lecturer in Latin American Studies at University College Cork. She completed a PhD in Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds in 2010. Her research explores cultural memory and justice in post-dictatorship Argentina and Uruguay.
Report
«Levey does a great job of setting out the study's theoretical framework, engaging with very relevant and interesting debates in the field of memory studies.»
(Raquel da Silva, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2018)
«Cara Levey's book is a valuable contribution to politics of memory debates both within and beyond transitional justice policy frameworks. As a comparative politics scholar, Levey offers in-depth comparison of both a well-studied and a less well-studied case-Argentina and Uruguay-with suggestive indications for why the cases converge and diverge regarding key human rights policies and praxis.»
(Katherine Hite, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 6/2018)
