Displaced Memories: The Poetics of Trauma in Argentine Women's Writing (review)

How can a concentration camp survivor express or represent traumatic memories about torture, survival, imprisonment and exile? M. Edurne Portela, an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Lehigh University, answers these questions in her book Displaced Memories. The book is divided into five chapters and a final chapter which includes her summarized thoughts and conclusions.

In the first chapter the author describes the period of repression and institutionalized violence in Argentina known as the "proceso de reorganización nacional" or the "Dirty War" (1976-1983). During these seven years of military rule, is estimated that 30,000 people disappeared from clandestine prisons. Basic human rights did not exist; kidnappings and torture became the "norm" during an exceptionally "abnormal" period. Many Argentines left the country, among them were the three author's Portela writes about in her book: Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, and Nora Strejilevich. These three women share similar histories: all three went into exile because it was the only option for survival; they all ended up in the United States and became professors at the university level; and after 1984 they returned to Argentina but did not stay in the country. Also, the three authors are relatively well known writers in the United States but their books were banned in Argentina. As Nora Strejilevich suggested in her book El arte de no olvidar "the fact that exile authors are not present in the national debate indicates that Argentina has not yet come to terms with its past." It is important to mention that La Escuelita by Alicia Partoy and Una sola muerte numerosa by Nora Strejilevich were published for the first time in Argentina in 2006, thirty years after the "Dirty War" ended.

In the second chapter Portela provides the theoretical foundations for the study of women's prison narratives. Most of the studies of contemporary Hispanic prisons are not literary in nature. Therefore, prison based narratives are perceived as marginal within literary circles and women's accounts are rarely studied. The author's intention is not to deal with problems about the genre itself but rather to explore "how the traumatic experiences and displacement caused by political violence are represented through language" (36) as recounted by three highly educated women. Portela proposes a new interpretation of trauma "as a claimed experience that can be brought into representation by the traumatized subject through acts of symbolization in an attempt to deal with the difficult past" (39), thus challenging post-structuralist theories on this topic. For example, Portela modifies Foucault's notions of power and power relations by presenting alternate explanations. Her goal, specifically when discussing Partnoy's book, is to dispute the idea that the power exercised by the prison guards was impersonal. She provides countless examples to prove her points. The main tasks of many living in the concentration camps was to identify in any way possible those who had power: " . . . by remembering as much as she can about the guards, she [Partnoy] attempts to bring them to justice or, at least, to let the world know who they are" (75).

The historical background and the explanation of the theory behind her work provide the framework for Portela's analysis of the following three chapters: Chapter 3 "Re-enacting Memory, Reconstructing Resistance: Alicia Partnoy's The Little School and La Escuelita" (1986; 1998; 2006), Chapter 4 "Uncanny Returns: Representation of Trauma in Alicia Kozameh's Pasos bajo el agua" (Steps Under Water 1987; 1996; 2002), and Chapter 5 "From Victim to Agent: Death, Devastation, and Dissent in Nora Strejilevich's Una sola muerte numerosa" (A Single, Numberless Death 1997; 2002; 2006).

Each of Portela's chapters concentrates on how torture, incarceration and exile affected the way these writers chose to narrate their traumatic experiences forced by state terrorism. When confronted with a traumatic past, the ability to bring back those memories is complex and unique to each survivor. Portela points out commonalities found amongst the authors studied. For example, a fragmented...