Dos Antígonas y la huella: Desaparición forzada y reconstrucción del sujeto en Una sola muerte numerosa de Nora Strejilevich y Antígona González de Sara Uribe

Abstract:This article analyses the mythical figure of Antigone in light of the forced disappearances of thousands of people in Argentina from 1976–1983 and in Mexico from 2006 to the present. Both Una sola muerte numerosa (1997) by Argentinian Nora Strejilevich, and Antígona González (2012) by Mexico's Sara Uribe explore the capacity of collective memory to resist violence. Following theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I use the term "rhizomatic violence" to describe forced disappearances in Argentina and Mexico as well as the imprints they leave in memory. The rewriting of Antigone in these two experimental literary texts record memories, but also create them, becoming the "symbol of the sign" in the Derridean concepts of "Temporalization" and the "Trace." In these configurations, memories as time are fragmented, juxtaposed, and linked to each other to make sense of the traumatic experiences of forced disappearances, allowing us to re-imagine a collective future.