The autobiographical narrative and the memory of civil-military dictatorship: a comparative analysis between Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

Among the events that contributed to the characterization of the twentieth century as the "age of catastrophe", or “age of extremes", civil-military dictatorships established in the second half of the century in the Latin American continent can be considered as phenomena that reinforce this idea. The individual and collective experiences shaped by this historical context have provided considerable material for the production of literary works marked by the testimonial tonic, characteristic of autobiographical narratives. Based on this panorama, the present paper aims to carry out a comparative analysis between two autobiographical narratives that are inserted in a wider scope of works whose central motive is the rescue of the past during the years of military dictatorship in Brazil and Argentina. Presenting the memory – considered at the individual and the collective levels – as the narrative’s guiding threads, the Brazilian journalist Maria Pilla (2015) and the Argentinean writer Nora Strejilevich (2006) provide in Volto semana que vem and in Una sola morte numerosa autobiographical narratives of their experiences as militants persecuted by the military regimes that were established in the mentioned countries between the 60s and the 80s. The comparative approach from these works enabled the identification of affinities in the way the authors constitute, process and materialize the memory of individual and collective trauma in the texture of the literary text.