This dissertation examines memory discourses about the most recent military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina produced in two photography exhibitions (the Brazilian government sponsored A ditadura no Brasil 1964-1985 and Marcelo Brodsky's Los compañeros) and two novels (Beatriz Bracher's Não falei and Sergio Chejfec's Los planetas). My research focuses on the capacity of postdictatorial cultural production to explore the negotiated spaces of meaning in both individual memories and collective discourses about the past. Drawing from interdisciplinary theoretical considerations on such themes as memory, representation, discourse, and subjectivity, I argue that cultural production that accentuates the impossibility to fully represent the past creates the conditions of possibility for spaces of dynamic memory about the military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina. These cultural spaces of representation offer the opportunity to destabilize the discursive logic that typically guides postdictatorial memory narratives through the reiteration of the same (counter)hegemonic political ideologies that dominated these eras of dictatorship. While I critique the A ditadura no Brasil photography exhibit for its presentation of an idealized counter-narrative about this time period, I contend that the memory discourses offered by Brodsky, Bracher, and Chejfec create spaces for a more meaningful engagement with the dictatorial past, particularly for those who did not directly experience the authoritarian governments in Brazil and Argentina. I maintain that instead of attempting to articulate a narrative "truth" about dictatorship, these works lay bare the negotiated processes of memory and meaning for the readers and spectators, which offers an opportunity to activate memory for new uses within different socio-political contexts in the present. Through this dissertation project, I seek to contribute to recent critical work calling for a new language to articulate the memory of dictatorship and innovative ways to engage traumatic experiences of the past through both literary and visual culture expressions. The continued consideration of memory discourses produced in postdictatorial cultural production is an essential component within the ongoing debates on the transmission of social memory about dictatorship in Brazil and Argentina, and for other populations attempting to engage the violence of an authoritarian past and its residual effects on the present.

Neste trabalho analisamos a representação do intelectual elaborada por Ricardo Piglia em seu romance La ciudad ausente tendo em vista como a concepção desenvolvida pelo autor se mostra fundamental para entendermos a profunda relação desta obra com o momento de sua escritura. Nosso trabalho se desenvolveu em três eixos estreitamente conectados: a maneira como Piglia se apropria da trajetória da intelligentsia no contexto argentino e ocidental, dado que se percebe em alguns dos seus personagens; a análise dos diálogos intertextuais que compõem este romance, apontando para o fato de que a eleição de antecedentes indica alguns dos critérios de leitura do autor e para um estreito vínculo entre a posição marginal e o papel do escritor; por fim a maneira como o tempo é elaborado dentro do romance, que nos leva a acreditar que a relação entre história e ficção se dê de maneira profunda no mesmo. Como anexo, foi incluída uma entrevista feita com o autor em 2012, momento em que foi possível interpela-lo sobre diversas questões que atravessam o conjunto de sua obra. / This study analyzes the representation of intellectual elaborated by Ricardo Piglia in his novel La ciudad ausente, seeking to understand how this conception is crucial to explore the relation of this work to the time of its writing. Our work was developed in three areas closely connected: how Piglia appropriates the trajectory of the intelligentsia in the argentine context and occidental, fact that one perceives in some of his characters; analysis of intertextual dialogues that make up this novel, given that the election background indicates the criteria for author reading and a close link between the marginal position and role of the writer; finally how the time is established in the novel, which leads us to believe that the link between history and fiction takes place in a profound way in this work In 2012 we did an interview with Ricardo Piglia, when it was possible to question the author about various features of his work. This meeting was included as an appendix to our research.

Neste trabalho analisamos a representação do intelectual elaborada por Ricardo Piglia em seu romance La ciudad ausente tendo em vista como a concepção desenvolvida pelo autor se mostra fundamental para entendermos a profunda relação desta obra com o momento de sua escritura. Nosso trabalho se desenvolveu em três eixos estreitamente conectados: a maneira como Piglia se apropria da trajetória da intelligentsia no contexto argentino e ocidental, dado que se percebe em alguns dos seus personagens; a análise dos diálogos intertextuais que compõem este romance, apontando para o fato de que a eleição de antecedentes indica alguns dos critérios de leitura do autor e para um estreito vínculo entre a posição marginal e o papel do escritor; por fim a maneira como o tempo é elaborado dentro do romance, que nos leva a acreditar que a relação entre história e ficção se dê de maneira profunda no mesmo. Como anexo, foi incluída uma entrevista feita com o autor em 2012, momento em que foi possível interpela-lo sobre diversas questões que atravessam o conjunto de sua obra. / This study analyzes the representation of intellectual elaborated by Ricardo Piglia in his novel La ciudad ausente, seeking to understand how this conception is crucial to explore the relation of this work to the time of its writing. Our work was developed in three areas closely connected: how Piglia appropriates the trajectory of the intelligentsia in the argentine context and occidental, fact that one perceives in some of his characters; analysis of intertextual dialogues that make up this novel, given that the election background indicates the criteria for author reading and a close link between the marginal position and role of the writer; finally how the time is established in the novel, which leads us to believe that the link between history and fiction takes place in a profound way in this work In 2012 we did an interview with Ricardo Piglia, when it was possible to question the author about various features of his work. This meeting was included as an appendix to our research.

My dissertation, Writing and Ethics in The Southern Cone: Literature between the Singular and The Specific, reads a series of examples from the last dictatorship and the current post-dictatorship period in the Southern Cone--novels and essays from Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay (including works by Augusto Roa Bastos, Roberto Bolaño and Horacio Verbitsky), and a critical debate between artists and intellectuals in Chile (Nelly Richard and Willy Thayer). My goal is to expose their ways of conceiving how communities and individuals are structured by language that organizes subjects according to logics of belonging and rejection according to political values and practices. I take as my point of departure the work of philosopher Peter Hallward on individuation and the formation of groups and communities, from his book Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing Between the Singular and the Specific (2002). I read my textual examples through the terms developed by Hallward, the Singular, the Specified, and the Specific. The Singular describes a way of imagining community identity as a self-creating and self-reinforcing unity where the only members are those who are innate to the singular concept that self-defines it. The Specified refers to a method by which subjects individuated themselves over and against a particular cause or people and thus define themselves by means of this difference. Lastly, the Specific describes a community that is radically indifferent to difference, arguing instead for a form of membership where any subject belongs. My dissertation shows how these three concepts are present in the historical and cultural ideas used by a contemporary generation of thinkers and artists to define the effects of the cultures of dictatorship and post-dictatorship in the Southern Cone. Understanding these concepts helps to elucidate how the cultural discourses during this period were structured and executed in relation to communitarian formation. In short, by reading my Southern Cone case studies through the optic of logics of individuation, I am able to produce a new way of seeing how the region’s intellectuals read the intersections of history, culture, politics, and community in the wake of Latin American dictatorships. / text