Subjectivity and the public sphere: the place of gender and family in memories of repression

Abstract

This paper deals with the ways in which gender and the family are symbolically present in the processes linked to memories of recent repressive pasts. The paper is based on the actual experience of social groups in the Southern Cone of Latin America, particularly in Argentina. The gender dimension can be seen in the ways in which women and men remember and silence the past violence, and in the emblematic place taken up by familistic and maternalistic images of the past. The centrality of kin relations in defining legitimacy of voice hinders a wider civic commitment to the issues involved.