Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-266).

Argentine literature at the close of the twentieth century is characterized by a marked interest in the themes of dictatorship, marginality, and exile. Given the shifting of public and private spaces in the country's recent history, a "sinister" space has appeared in the collective subconscious, where all that was negated, prohibited and repressed is now (re)surfacing with tremendous energy in a constant probing into the collective memory effectuated from still present traumas without closure. / The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the "social tics" which flourish in various art forms, as well as in the underpinnings of Argentine society, and come from the fact that collective suffering has created a defined present which controls the past, and, inevitably, influences the future. In turn, certain themes thus emerge from subjective and fragmented spaces of enunciation where memory plays a crucial role. / In order to do this, I concentrate here on alternative cultural productions to the official propaganda produced during and after the period of dictatorship, paying special attention to women's narratives and testimonies or memoirs of repression. Finally, I undertake an analysis of certain selected cinematographic productions which, like the contemporary literature analysed here, also form part of the movement that demonstrates the need to question Argentine reality---present and past---by foregrounding collective and individual memory in opposition to the generalized trend of amnesia/anaesthesia to point up the very real danger inherent in such "historic amnesia." Taken together, these works reveal the existence of a past that must be recaptured and redeemed, but which, given the existence of the negated and silenced "sinister" space in contemporary reality, forms only a small part of Argentine history still under construction.

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