In: HeLix - Dossiers zur romanischen Literaturwissenschaft, 5 (2012), pp. 16-43

Abstract

How do women authors shape their labors of memory? What strategies do they use in order to evoke past sorrow or confront residual trauma? Which present-day circumstances can reawaken embodied memories? This essay draws on post-colonial theory, specifically the concept of “writing back,” in order to unveil the multiple layers of remembering enclosed in the corpora of testimonial and fictional texts written by Argentinean women. Since the forces of state repression targeted rebellious women in two ways, by declaring them “subversives” and via a generally misogynistic society, this literature counters hegemonic versions of the past while reframing memory in a gendered way. This essay discusses these acts of strategic “writing back” on the basis of testimony by Pilar Calveiro, Graciela Feinstein, Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, Susana Romano Sued and Nora Strejilevich, and fictional texts by Cristina Feijóo, Manuela Fingueret, Norma Huidobro and Sara Rosenberg.