Narratives of militancy: reconstructions of female resistance to dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to problematize the narratives based on memories of militant resistance against the civil-military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina. The debates around this recent past are predominantly male speech and writing, so we try to occupy this place with women's narratives, studying the ways that these memories of the two dictatorships, especially female political resistance, are reconstructed. This study is about three groups of narratives written by these women: I) academic narratives; II) literary narratives, and III) oral narratives. The gender's experiences in militancy and in prison situation are seen as factors that contribute in the testimony's paradox of a traumatic period, which is signalized by the need and, at the same time, by the impossibility of narration. Our perspective is based on the intersection of the memory studies with feminist thought, and the narratives are understood as a manifestation of memory. In this way, it is possible to check how the paradoxes and tensions present in them are articulated in the narratives of these experiences. (AU)