Collective memories, human rights and resistances

Summary: In Latin America, the concept of collective memory has been linked to reflection on the political violence of wars, armed confrontations and military dictatorships in recent decades. The confrontation of violence in the past has resulted in the development of memory policies, understood as both State policies and political actions of social organizations or political groups involved in the process of re-remembering the political conflicts experienced in their local contexts. We are going to focus on some emblematic cases in our region, such as Nicaragua, Colombia, Argentina and Chile.

We will see how, in current contexts, in different regions and countries of Latin America, the various practices of resistance to the current scenarios of exploration, expropriation, concentration of wealth and public and private violence, go back to a memory that recovers the different knowledges of political struggle, becoming an active memory. Not a global context, resistance tends to be local. We will do a review and analysis of resistance experiences in Mexico and the Andean interior of Peru, Argentina and Chile.

A critical analysis of the memory policies implemented in different Latin American countries leads us to argue that, with significant contributions made to understand the authoritative processes, dictatorships and political transitions in the region, as well as to confront and elaborate the consequences that these have in society and in people, it is a great challenge to understand. decode or establish links with the new sociopolitical realities that are developing in the region, as new developments in political violence and forms of resistance are articulated.

However, analyzing experiences of resistance in which memory is transformed into a political resource to act non-present will help us to rethink memory as an agent that contributes to transformation.

Coordination:  Isabel Piper (University of Chile)

Summary: The course addresses the relationship between gender and memory, emphasizing two ways of understanding this articulation: on the one hand, understanding collective memory constructed by gender subjects, and on the other, exploring different feminist approaches present in this field of study. From this perspective, we analyze the memories prepared by activists, guerrillas, victims and other social agents in relationships with their non-present and non-past gender positions; bem as the continuities and discontinuities of two fathers and gender dynamics that occur in significant events that they narrate.

Through these analyses, the aim is to analyze exercises of countermemory (ARFUCH, 2013; LUONGO, 2013) or subaltern memories that emphasize themes and perspectives little explored in hegemonic memories: for example, to visualize how gender orders are destabilized or preserved in the construction of these memories, or how hybrid processes of emotion, political action and resistance to re-remembering certain events and contexts are structured. It is necessary to understand that the subjects of memories are multipositional agents that are articulated by means of events/spaces (ZALAQUET, 2011).

Finally, the course will analyze various studies of the collective memory of Ibero-American countries that precisely reflect a gender perspective in understanding two processes of construction of collective memory, in order to make visible the experiences – of victimization and/or political resistance – that are silenced by a memory masculinized and heterossexist hegemonic, or to install understandings of gender from the past through a critical reading of forms as different episodes são narrated from the present.

Summary: The objective of this curricular unit is to dialogue with the processes of collective memory and migration, in the interest of illuminating new contours that allow us to better understand the complexity of each one, in the context of globalization and advanced capitalism.

In this sense, we will address the particular nuances of two problems considered fundamental to memory studies such as places and commemorations; disputes between official reports and informative reports; museificação and patrimonialização. Also with the objective of examining dynamics such as memories without a place or “no place” of migrations; to interrogate two imaginations of exclusion and the limits of belonging; Cultural initiatives are alternatives for managing political tensions, their conflictive character and also their potential.

In the same way, we are going to confront ourselves with problems that we do not study in contemporary migrations, such as diaspora and transnational spaces; The subjectivity of migrants and the impacts of mobility regimes in their future. It attempts to analyze the tension of national borders as the contours of collective memory and the potential of memories and countermemories in the configuration of resistance to subordination and articulations of differences (BRAIDOTTI, 2006), during the migratory trajectories.

Coordination: Belén Rojas (University of Utrecht, Netherlands)

Summary: The course reflects on the genealogy, transformation and analytical possibilities of the category of disappearance. Used for the cases of Argentina, Chile or Uruguay in the 70s, in Mexico or Colombia today, and we have forgotten it for a long time in the Spanish Civil War, in Nazi Germany in the 40s, in Cambodia in the Khmer Rouge in the 70s or in Bosnia in the war in the 90s. cases that are called disappearances and disappearances.

Coordination: Gabriel Gatti (University of the Basque Country, Spain)

Summary: This seminar seeks to reflect on the ways in which Latin American societies face political violence in the past, such as turmoil or internal armed conflicts that they have experienced throughout the 20th century and part of the 21st century, for example two memory processes undertaken by different social actors. Through this seminar we will address the public forms of memory that are built on past violence, critically analyzing the memory processes implemented in different countries in the region, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay, questioning the present of these societies, in particular about new violence and current conflicts.

Coordination: Ana Gugliemucci (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Loreto López (University of Chile)

Summary: This seminar seeks to reflect on the ways in which Latin American societies face political violence in the past, such as turmoil or internal armed conflicts that they have experienced throughout the 20th century and part of the 21st century, for example two memory processes undertaken by different social actors. Through this seminar we will address the public forms of memory that are built on past violence, critically analyzing the memory processes implemented in different countries in the region, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay, questioning the present of these societies, in particular about new violence and current conflicts.

Coordination: Ana María Barletta and Emmanuel Kahan (National University of La Plata, Argentina)

Summary: This course aims to address the memory of history and popular struggles in Latin American aesthetic production in its different forms: in visual arts, in popular music, in poetry, in literature, in cinema and in theater.

Coordination: Ana Rüsche (Flacso, Brazil)