Cry for me, Argentina: The performance of trauma in the short narrative of Aida Bortnik, Greselda Gambaro, and Tununa Mercado.

摘要

Inspired by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo's work for memory and justice, Cry for Me, Argentina is an interdisciplinary study that draws on Latin American, literary, trauma, performance, and cultural studies to analyze the narrative of three Argentine women writers/activists---Aida Bortnik, Griselda Gambaro, and Tununa Mercado---whose work reveals the traumatic repercussions of the Dirty War (1976--1983) and cultivates a narrative space for working through traumatic impact of the era: the grave losses of human life (30,000 dissappeared individuals) the breakdown of civil liberties and the ongoing struggles these problems have perpetuated.In "Aida Bortnik's 'Tales from the Crypt': The Disappeared Stories" I read the paratextual elements contextualizing Bortnik's elusive narrative style, situating her work within an arena of literary activism. While encouraging non-violence and community, Bortnik's short stories published in the magazine HUMRTM are plagued with elliptical textual spaces that draw the reader into a performance of mourning.Griselda Gambaro's stories in Lo mejor que se tiene represent the violent aftermath's traumatic entrapment and call for what Dominick LaCapra calls 'empathic unsettlement'. While Gambaro's narrative traces the economic and psychological repercussions of the war ravaged era, her stories generate the need to work through trauma in order to heal the nation's social fabric. She stresses the solitude of the victim and the importance of empathic others and ideal listeners in a society that is plagued with trauma.Tununa Mercado weaves memory and grief into public yet intimate spaces of commemoration, resuscitating the presence of the disappeared while undoing her own traumatic entrapment through writing. In "Tununa Mercado's Paper Cemeteries," I trace her mourning work through her sequential publications upon return to Argentina after living in exile: En estado de memoria, La letra de to minimo, and Narrar despues.I propose that the work of all three authors emphasizes the imperative to restore the dialogical principal obliterated by repressive authoritarian regimes. By doing so within their narrative, they cultivate a performative space in which they incite the reader to participate in the process of mourning, working toward social justice and healing.