Rethinking Testimonial Cinema in Postdictatorship Argentina

Veronica Garibotto

Description

For roughly two decades after the collapse of the military regime in 1983, testimonial narrative was viewed and received as a privileged genre in Argentina. Today, however, academics and public intellectuals are experiencing "memory fatigue," a backlash against the concepts of memory and trauma, just as memory and testimonial films have reached the center of Argentinian public discourse. In Rethinking Testimonial Cinema in Postdictatorship Argentina, Verónica Garibotto looks at the causes for this reticence and argues that, rather than discarding memory texts for their repetitive excess, it is necessary to acknowledge them and their exhaustion as discourses of the present.

By critically examining how trauma theory and subaltern studies have previously been applied to testimonial cinema, Garibotto rereads Argentinian films produced since 1983 and calls for an alternate interpretive framework at the intersection of semiotics, theories of affect, scholarship on hegemony, and the ideological uses of documentary and fiction. She argues that recurrent concepts—such as trauma, mourning, memory, and subalternity—miss how testimonial films have changed over time, shifting from subaltern narratives to official, hegemonic, and iconic accounts. Her work highlights the urgent need to continue to study these types of narratives, particularly at a time when military dictatorships have become entrenched in Latin America and memory narratives proliferate worldwide. Although Argentina is Garibotto's focus, her theory can be adapted to other contexts in which narratives about recent political conflicts have shifted from alternative versions of history to official, hegemonic accounts—such as in Spanish, Chilean, Uruguayan, Brazilian, South African, and Holocaust testimonies. Garibotto's study of testimonial cinema moves us to pursue a broader ideological analysis of the links between film and historical representation.

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Redefining Testimonial Cinema

1. Knowledge and Feeling: Testimonial Documentary and Fiction in the 1980s

2. Indexicality and Counter-Hegemony: Testimonial Documentary in the 1990s

3. Distortion and History in Post-2000 Second-Generation Performative Documentaries

4. Emotion and History in Post-2000 Second-Generation Iconic Fictions

Afterword: From Counter-Hegemony to Hegemony

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Genres
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Película fotográfica
• América del Sur
• South America
• Latin America
• History of the Americas
• History of film
• Documentary film
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 07 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253038548
• Langue: English

Extrait

RETHINKING TESTIMONIAL CINEMA IN POSTDICTATORSHIP ARGENTINA
NEW DIRECTIONS IN NATIONAL CINEMAS
Robert Rushing, editor
RETHINKING TESTIMONIAL CINEMA IN POSTDICTATORSHIP ARGENTINA
Beyond Memory Fatigue

Ver nica Garibotto
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Ver nica Garibotto
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03850-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03851-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03852-4 (ebook)
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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: Redefining Testimonial Cinema

1 Knowledge and Feeling: Testimonial Documentary and Fiction in the 1980s

2 Indexicality and Counterhegemony: Testimonial Documentary in the 1990s

3 Distortion and History in Post-2000 Second-Generation Performative Documentaries

4 Emotion and History in Post-2000 Second-Generation Iconic Fictions

Afterword: From Counterhegemony to Hegemony

Works Cited
Index
Preface and Acknowledgments
A S IS OFTEN the case with research projects, this one was born, over a decade ago, of an impossibility. In 2005, while contemplating topics for my doctoral dissertation, I attended several panels and read various texts on the representation of history in contemporary Argentine culture. I soon noticed a dominant trend, both in Latin American and US scholarship. The vast majority of the contributions-particularly those concerning the links among culture, history, and politics-focused on filmic or literary narratives of the 1976-1983 dictatorship. These narratives, usually told in the first person by a camp survivor or a child of disappeared parents, were mostly analyzed from the standpoint of trauma theory-that is, most interpretations addressed how trauma, memory, and mourning emerged in or resulted from these stories. For my own autobiographical reasons (when I was six weeks old, my father was deeply wounded in a bomb attack claimed by Montoneros), I had always been interested in Argentine politics and especially in understanding the 1970s and its effects. So, at first, I believed I had found my niche. Postmemory, melancholy, and grief -for me, these terms held the mesmerizing power of a revealed truth. Yet, after some time had passed, I felt unable to join the conversation. I had the impression that there was nothing new that could be said about trauma, memory, and mourning. I thought that there was no way one could read these narratives without repeating what other people had observed. I became convinced that it was unnecessary to continue addressing this corpus, given the volume of contributions that already existed.
Confronted with these impossibilities, I decided to be pragmatic: I would set the topic aside, avoid all presentations on trauma at future conferences, and write a dissertation on something new : the nineteenth century. The release of Beatriz Sarlo s book Tiempo pasado at the end of that same year reinforced my decision. Sarlo, arguably the most emblematic intellectual in Argentina, published a strong critique of first-person narratives, declaring what I thought would be the death of memory culture. Moreover, a number of academics concurred with Sarlo, and several memory narratives, like Albertina Carri s film Los rubios , explicitly represented their own exhaustion, staging what Andreas Huyssen has described as memory fatigue (3). That was the end of my dilemma: I forgot about the topic, returned to the nineteenth century, and wrote a dissertation that eventually developed into my first book.
But memory culture did not die, despite Sarlo s statements and Carri s parody. Quite the contrary; the Kirchner administration (2003-2015) continued to try former military officers, to allocate public funds for the creation of TV programs denouncing past dictatorial violence, and to give voice to human rights organizations like Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Furthermore, films and novels on the dictatorship became especially prolific, as children born to missing parents grew up and became adults willing to tell their own stories. Since 2005, at least eighteen of these second-generation survivors have created their own narratives based on their childhood experiences. Although I had resolved to forget the topic, several questions-to borrow the language of trauma theory-began to haunt me. Was getting rid of memory culture the only answer to the problems that Sarlo and Huyssen had identified? Was it indeed impossible to say something meaningful about these texts that accounted for a vast portion of Argentine culture and continued to mobilize people s feelings? Could I somehow redefine the theoretical approach to find new lines of inquiry and insight?
This book is an attempt to overcome my initial sense of impossibility. Its primary goals are to critically examine traditional approaches to testimonial cinema (trauma theory and subaltern studies), to propose an alternate interpretive framework at the intersection of semiotics and theories of affect, and to reread Argentine films produced between 1983 and 2016 from this latter standpoint. I expect that this renewed analysis will contribute to understanding the specific place of first-person narratives in contemporary Argentine culture and to overcoming the existing fatigue surrounding the topic ( el temita [the topic], as academic, writer, and second-generation survivor Mariana Eva Perez, also known as la princesa montonera [the Montonero princess], has brilliantly called the fossilized discourse on the dictatorship). Although I focus on Argentina, my readings could also apply to other contexts in which narratives about recent political conflicts have shifted from alternative versions of history to hegemonic, iconic accounts: Spanish, Chilean, Uruguayan, and Brazilian postdictatorship narratives; accounts of apartheid South Africa; and Holocaust testimonies, to name but a few. In this sense, I see postdictatorship Argentina as a case study for rethinking testimonial cinema in a larger context, one that goes beyond trauma and subaltern theories. I also believe that an approach combining semiotics and affect theories could be helpful in pursuing an ideological analysis of the links between film and historical representation more broadly.
In spite of what it might have felt daily, as I sat in front of the computer trying to organize ideas, writing this book has truly been a collective endeavor. A number of colleagues and friends shared their own thoughts, time, and resources to make my work possible, and I am forever grateful for their generosity. First and foremost, I am grateful to Joanna Page, Jorge P rez, and Laura Podalsky, who wrote several letters of recommendation, including the ones that allowed me to receive a Hall Center Humanities Research Fellowship in the spring of 2017. This fellowship provided the release time from teaching and service that was instrumental to giving the final touches to the manuscript-and I am also grateful to the Hall Center staff and other fellows for enabling such a welcoming, productive environment. John Beverley, Andrea Cobas Carral, and Antonio G mez selflessly dedicated their time to reading different sections, sharing important sources, and/or helping me develop my ideas. John Beverley s thought-provoking work on testimonio is actually what sparked my interest in conceiving of this corpus in testimonial terms-even if, as I note in the introduction, some of his arguments need to be rethought for the Argentine case. I will never be able to thank him enough for all the things that he has taught me, including that a lucid scholar can also be a genuine listener and a modest, generous person. Paola Boh rquez inspired me with productive conversations on the links between culture and psychoanalysis. Jorge P rez supported me in multiple ways that go beyond letters of recommendation and that include (but are not limited to) grant applications and words of encouragement. Gonzalo Aguilar, Albertina Carri, Geoffrey Maguire, Paola Margulis, Pablo Piedras, Ximena Triquell, and Noa Vaisman kindly sent me their own materials. Andr s Di Tella dedicated Facebook time to clearing my doubts on his work. Javier Barroso, Stuart Day, Betsaida Reyes, and Margot Versteeg located important bibliographic references and new sources. Juan Pablo Cinelli and Astrid Riehn provided valuable contact information. Ari Linden, the KU Writing Center, and especially Robin Myers helped me polish grammar and style. Lina Mu oz M rquez and Juan Pablo Rom n Alvarado helped me with formatting. Keah Cunningham and Jonathan Perkins, from KU s EGARC, spared me several headaches with their magical editing of the book s screen grabs. The students in my doctoral seminar on testimonial narratives in the spring of 2015 infused energy to my writing with their enthusiastic opinions.
This project was also possible thanks to several grants from the University of Kansas: General Research Funds (2014, 2015, and 2017), Research Excellence Funds (2018), a sabbatical leave in the fall of 2016, and travel awards from the College of Arts and Sciences, t