Monograph: The other postmemory. Visual creations for truth, justice and reparation, from the perspective of descendants of perpetrators

 

Coordinators: Luis Olano Ereña and Violeta Alarcón Zayas

 

The memory of peoples who suffered mass state violence is hijacked, and it is recovered at great cost through fragments of disconnected narratives and confusing memories, navigating blindly among amnesic and uprooted witnesses, silent threats, ghosts of the disappeared, and orphaned documents. We inhabit a schizophrenic present where the term "Nazi" has been trivialized and distorted, where apologists and perpetrators of genocides and mass torture use the language of human rights to victimize themselves. We witness in astonishment the return of political groups supportive of dictatorial regimes. Impunity for genocidaires in their home countries leads to trials, with little success and much suffering on the part of victims and their families, in foreign countries in the name of transitional justice, while others who have already been convicted increasingly seek exoneration from their sentences. Thousands of disappeared individuals remain buried in mass graves while perpetrators continue to go unaccountable, allowing their heirs to benefit from the spoils and extreme violence caused by those who were once civilian and military authorities, officials, and soldiers of states that now call themselves democratic. States that inhabit populations with forgotten, silenced, and blinded memories, first by repression and fear, and progressively by the simple inertia of time, which erases and blurs everything.

In this infamous context, reminiscent of the years following the great crisis of capitalism and the rise of fascisms in the 1920s and 1930s, small social movements of high political and ethical significance emerge, joining the testimonies of victims and their families. That is, in addition to the task of confronting forgetfulness and impunity, cultivated by associations of victims and human rights defenders, individuals and groups of descendants of perpetrators of mass violence join the struggle for truth, justice, and reparation, identifying with the pain of the victims.

Sociology, cultural criticism, and memory and post-memory studies have extensively addressed the cultural production of descendants of victims of crimes against humanity. Another rising perspective in this field is the focus on the perpetrator. Recent cinematic examples can be found in diverse contexts such as Argentina, Chile, the USA, Spain, Israel, Iran, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Africa, or Rwanda. In Chile, the animated short film "Bestia" by Hugo Covarrubias was nominated for an Oscar in 2022, and in 2023, the 50th anniversary of the coup d'état, Pablo Larraín released "El Conde," a grotesque satire starring a 250-year-old Pinochet vampire. In the USA, filmmaker Paul Schrader concluded his trilogy of portraits of men who committed atrocious crimes in the past with "The Gardener" in 2022. In the same year, Austrian director Ulrich Seidl presented his diptych "Rimini" and "Sparta," showing the infamous legacy of Nazism. Images of crimes produced by the perpetrators themselves have also generated printed reflections, such as the works of Vicente Sánchez-Biosca's "La muerte en los ojos. Qué perpetran las imágenes del perpetrador" (2021) or Stephen Einsenman's "The Abu Ghraib Effect" (2007). However, analyses of visual creations by descendants of perpetrators or works featuring bearers of these uncomfortable family legacies, such as the documentaries "El hijo del cazador" (2018), "Apuntes para una herencia" (2019), or "Urraca, cazador de rojos" (2022), are still scarce.

The emergence in Argentina in 2017 of "Historias desobedientes," a collective of children and grandchildren of perpetrators of crimes against humanity who, upon discovering their deeds, cut ties with their relatives through repudiation and denunciation, is particularly relevant. Among them stand out the works of Vanina Falco and Nicolás Ruarte, who confront silence, fear, and guilt through theater. In the same years in Chile, Andrés Lübbert and Lissette Orozco participated in a similar process, filming documentaries about victimizers within their families. Other cases of great ethical, social, and historical relevance that have not yet been widely addressed in academic literature are the restorative encounters between victims and perpetrators in the post-conflict situations in the Basque Country or Colombia.

The process of "Historias desobedientes" raises various questions: Can we consider it a glimpse of new hopes for the recovery of memory in the context of peoples punished by state terrorism? Is it a movement capable of decisively influencing the halting of processes of forgetfulness that enable and perpetuate the political, economic, and symbolic power of authoritarian regimes? Could it be considered a process similar to that which occurred in Germany with collective guilt for the Holocaust? In what sense could they be related? Would a similar process be desirable and, if so, possible, in Spain and in other Latin American countries where truth and transitional justice are still pending? To what extent do these testimonies and agencies of second and third generations impact the restoration of severed relationships with our past, the understanding of the present, and the construction of a fairer future? Based on these questions, we propose to open a space to deepen the studies of postmemory or intergenerational memory crossed by trauma and mediated by images (Hirsh) and the concept of implicated subjects, which appeals to the ethical responsibility of the heirs of perpetrators and seeks to expand the field beyond the victim-perpetrator-witness trinomial (Rothberg).

In this monograph, we encourage reflection and self-reflection on the meanings and potentialities of the creation of visual works (painting, drawing, engraving, architecture, sculpture, dance, theater, film, photography, video art, installations, performances, land art, street art, graffiti, digital arts, etc.), works of fiction and essays that critically review dictatorships and repressive states in Latin America and Spain. In this sense, we accept both the analysis of external works, exhibitions, and artistic projects, produced or starring implicated subjects, as well as works on their own creations. That is, we welcome contributions on works created or directed by heirs, whether through direct family affiliation or indirect affiliation (ideological, labor, etc.), and also works on works produced by non-implicated subjects that portray heirs of the perpetrator who disapprove, denounce, and are ashamed of the crimes committed by their relatives, thus rejecting their legacy and identifying with the memory and suffering of the victims.

 

Descriptors:

Articles in Spanish, Portuguese, and English will be accepted. Accepted texts will have a scientific article format, respecting the style guidelines of the Ñawi journal. The text can revolve around the following axes:

• Memories mediated by oral testimonies, personal objects, photographs, family archives, and artistic devices or cultural artifacts.
• Filiative and affiliative memories.
• Distortions of memory, forgetfulness, amnesias, silences, secrets, traumatic memories, guilt, estrangement.
• Visual works (cinematic, audiovisual, photographic, theatrical, plastic, performative, etc.) produced and/or starring implicated subjects.
• Author's perspective: self-reference and self-reflection in the artistic creations of descendants of perpetrators.
• Implicated subjects. Expanding the framework of human rights violations away from the victim/perpetrator/witness trinomial (Rothberg).

 

References:

Basile, T. (2020). Padres perpetradores. Perspectivas desde los hijos e hijas de represores en Argentina. Kamchatka. Revista de Análisis Cultural, 15, 127-157.

Bartalini, C. [et al.] (2018). Escritos desobedientes. Historias de hijas, hijos y familiares de genocidas por la memoria, la verdad y la justicia. Buenos Aires: Marea.

Earll, A. [et al.] eds. (2008) Cultural Memory Studies An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlín - New York: Walter De Gruyter

Faber, S. (2014). Actos afiliativos y posmemoria: asuntos pendientes. Pasavento. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 2 (1), 137-156.

Hirsch, M. (2012). The Generation of postmemory: Writing and visual culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.

Lazzara, M. J. (2020). Familiares de colaboradores y perpetradores en el documental chileno: posmemoria y sujeto implicado. Atenea (Concepción), 521, 231-248.

Maguire, G. (2017). The Politics of Postmemory. Violence and Victimhood in Contemporary Argentine Culture. Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

Morag, R. (2018). On the Definition of the Perpetrator: From the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century. Journal of Perpetrator Research, 2 (1), pp.13–19.

Moral, J. [et al.] (2020) Facing the perpetrator's legacy: post-perpetrator generation documentary films. Continuum 34 (2), pp. 255-270.

Rothberg, M. (2019). The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Dates:

• Call for Papers Announcement: May 15, 2023
• Call for Papers Deadline: September 15, 2024
• Selected Article for Publication: November 15, 2024
• Article Published: January 15, 2024