Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"
Argentina Betrayed is a powerful book that attempts to parse the constructions and continual reconstructions of the key concepts of trust, trauma, betrayal, memory, accountability, and mourning as analytical tools to understand repressive state violence and its legacy for Argentine society. Antonius C. G. M. Robben is to be commended for his examination of the question of what the legacies of repression portend for Argentine democracy and the future of its political projects." * Jennifer Schirmer, International State Crime Initiative *
"
Argentina Betrayed is a devastating chronicle of the three decades' aftermath of Argentina's dirty war on a deeply divided and traumatized nation. Antonius C. G. M. Robben argues that the loss of basic trust in state, church, and civil society by survivors, perpetrators, and ordinary citizens, and the failed attempts of post-terror presidents to articulate a shared political and moral narrative of the past events has impeded any pathway to restorative justice. The result is an intolerable state of chaos, multiple truths and falsehoods, moral confusion, and disordered attachment and grief. Robben describes a social world despoiled by a profound sense of betrayal, ontological insecurity, disengagement, and bewilderment that have left permanent scars on individual, social, and political bodies. Each chapter opens a fresh wound via keywords that diagnose a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions." * Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of
Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil *
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations
Introduction. Trust and Betrayal
Chapter 1. Trauma
Chapter 2. Memory
Chapter 3. Testimony
Chapter 4. Denial
Chapter 5. Sovereignty
Chapter 6. Accountability
Chapter 7. Guilt
Chapter 8. Mourning
Conclusion
Appendix. Timeline of Argentine Political History
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
