Postmemory

Abstract

This chapter addresses the links between memory, politics, and performance in the works of the so-called postmemory generations in Latin America, composed of those who were born or grew up during the dictatorships and internal conflicts that shattered the region during the second half of the twentieth century. It specifically discusses two plays: Villa+Discurso (Villa+Speech), written and directed by the Chilean dramaturge Guillermo Calderón, and Cuarto Intermedio: Guía práctica para juicios de lesa humanidad (Recess: A practical guide for trials of crimes against humanity), directed by the Argentine filmmaker Juan Schnitman and performed by the writer Félix Bruzzone, a son of disappeared parents, and Mónica Zwaig, a French lawyer and actress. Both Villa+Discurso and Cuarto intermedio touch upon Latin America’s bleakest crimes but without solemnity and with (dark) humor, and raise important and uncomfortable questions, such as who decides what to do with the material traces of the painful past, and what is our responsibility, our implication, to shared national traumas. Both plays claim that (post)memory is not merely a familial and private issue but is also a collective effort. Moreover (post)memory is presented here not so much as a representation, a recollection, or even a reenactment of the past, but as concrete actions and political interventions in the present. Thus the focus in this chapter is not only on the content of these plays (how postmemory is represented) but, more important, on the effects, and affects, that they produce on and beyond the stage.