Amnesty not Amnesia: Transitional Justice in Chilean Post-Dictatorship Film and Fiction

Document Type : Original Article

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College of Language and Communication, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport

Abstract

This paper tackles the traditional conflict in post dictatorship transition between the rights of the victims of authoritarian regimes to voice their suffering on the one hand, and the state narratives towards national consensus for the sake of stability and national order on the other. Post dictatorship Chilean literature and film attempt to make individual memory coincide with the collectivity in order to, even if not to punish ousted dictators and their aides, at least guarantee the crimes committed are not forgotten but kept alive in the collective memory of the nation. For this matter, Death and the Maiden (play and film), The House of the Spirits (novel and film) and “Amnesia” (film) are chosen for the study. The questions of the study are adopted from Lawrence Weschler’s A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers that investigates whether amnesty granted for dictators should turn into amnesia or whether the record of their crimes disappear. The study attempts to offer an answer through Marianne Hirsch’s post-memory theory.

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