Queering Kinship. The Performance of Blood and the Attires of Memory

摘要

This essay focuses on the emergence of a non-normative lineage of mourning in the wake of Argentina's last dictatorship (1976-1983). It looks at Mi vida después (Lola Arias, 2009), a play based on the real stories of six actors who were born during the dictatorship. By challenging Marianne Hirsch's idea of postmemory, forged in order to address the experiences of the second generation of survivors, I consider how personal testimonies can travel off the stage to build new affiliations in the present. I suggest that Mi vida después offers an expanded machine for the exploration of memory that also includes the bodies of the audience. Among the testimonies, I focus on the story of two non-biological siblings: the actor Vanina Falco and Juan Cabandié, the son of a murdered activist couple who was abducted from ESMA by Luis Falco, a police officer working for the military. I address how Vanina relates to her father-appropriator, recently condemned to eighteen years of imprisonment. In so doing, I show how the performance of blood can help to conceive a broader idea of being affected by violence. Ultimately, I suggest that traumatic pasts are also attires that can be adopted in the context of spectatorship.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2012.694807