Abstract
This chapter presents an analysis of the poeticized representation of trauma in the search for justice in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s El silencio de otros. The documentary’s interviewees and plaintiffs in the Argentine lawsuit are memory activists who seek justice through international law. Octogenarian protagonists and elderly orphans, María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra, demand the remains of their parents, murdered by the Francoists. This cinematic rendering of disinterment—the opening of the grave in the quest for closure—bespeaks the baroque womb-tomb trope and pays homage to the dead. Ultimately, the mediated and narrativized exhumation quest combats assimilatory forgetting, stands as a surrogate for jurisprudential justice, reverts the necropower of Francoism, and secures victims’ rightful place in the community of the meaningful.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 277-321 |
| Number of pages | 45 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict |
|---|---|
| ISSN (Print) | 2634-6419 |
| ISSN (Electronic) | 2634-6427 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
