Recordar, olvidar: violencia y silencio en la ficción contemporánea

Resumen

This article analyzes the connection between violence and silence in two recent Argentinian novels that closely explore the politics of memory: Una misma noche by Leopoldo Brizuela (2012) and Una muchacha muy bella by Julián López (2013). Recent narratives connected to trauma tend to employ new strategies to account for the relationships between violence and silence. What is the nexus between violence, politics, and memory in these stories? How do these narratives propose the permanence of memory as a means to protect against forgetting? How does violence manifest itself through language? Are there substantial differences between texts from the present and the past? Silence is an extreme way of using violence to stifle and close off memory. This essay focuses on modes of representing silence in both its thematic and its narrative aspects, as well as procedures for recounting it.