Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the "Dirty War"

Palgrave Studies in Oral History

by Susana Kaiser

Postmemories of Terror focuses on how young Argentineans remember the traumatic events of the military dictatorship (1976-83). This work is based on oral histories with sixty-three young people who were too young to be directly victimized or politically active during this period. All were born during or after the terror and possessed an entirely mediated knowledge of it. Susana Kaiser explores how the post-dictatorship generation was reconstructing this past from three main inter-generational dialogue, education, and the communication media. These conversations discuss selected and recurrent themes like societal fears and silences, remembering and forgetting, historical explanations, and accountability. Together they contribute to our understanding of how communities deal with the legacy of terror.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published December 11, 2005

Reviews

[Boorrito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Postmemory - which Kaiser defines as second generation memories of the children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma - is a topic that is not often explored and when it is, it focues on the memories of children of 'direct' survivors. Therefore Kaiser deciding to look at the postmemories of 'grey-zoners' - those whose parents survived the military dictatorship but were not directly 'involved' - is an unusual but worthwhile endeavour.

The silence and denial of the generation who experienced the dictatorship - "we didn't know then" - is an interesting point that arises in the book. Despite denial and silence their children still felt the same fear that their parents did, as shown their concerns that it could return again.

The final chapter, in which the children of desaparecidos involved in the organisation HIJOS discussed similar themes that the 'grey-zoners' had in the book was an useful contrast to them, and also showed the similarities between the politically active and the 'apathetic' - an apathy which did not appear to run as deep as it appeared.

This book was published in 2003 with the interview work carried out in 1998. Attitudes toward the dirty war has changed since then, as noted in Kaiser's afterword when she discusses the revocation of impunity laws. Therefore it should be considered a snapshot of what young people thought in 1998, not as a current guide to how young people see the history of the 'dirty war' or even what the generation interviewed in 1998 thinks now.

[Maria Rufino · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is helpful to an audience with limited information on the events that occurred in Argentina during the dictatorship. Kaiser seems to be looking at how the opinion of young Argentineans are of the past of events, how much they really know and how they obtained the information. Although I find parts of Kaiser's interviewing methods questionable, i think it is a great book.