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Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine a corpus of cultural productions from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Spain that delve into various forms of state-sponsored terrorism, fights against oblivion, and degrees of trauma experienced by Southern Cone exiled characters that fled to Spain. Taking as a starting point the concept of memory entrepreneurs, a term coined by Elizabeth Jelin to define the multiple social agents who seek to legitimize their narrative of the past over other interpretations, I aim to explore the diverse roles that exiled characters play in the pursuit of remembrance of both the country they were forced to leave and their host country. This study is motivated by two main questions: How do these works and their characters promote debate on memory on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, with their shared past of repression and exile? How does the representation of dictatorial violence, forced displacement, and identity formation in these cultural productions contribute to a quest for justice, be it personal or political, common to all of the works? To answer these questions, I draw on a theoretical and critical framework inspired by Michel Foucaults study of power and identity, Cathy Caruths, Jean Francos, Elizabeth Liras, and Eugenia Weinsteins research on trauma, as well as Elizabeth Jelins examination of memory and gender. I argue that these works are not only tools that imagine possible outcomes to real-life issues, but ones that are able to challenge public discourses such as those that justified state-sponsored terrorism (prominent during the dictatorships) and those that defended an alleged need for impunity, a rhetoric that can still be heard frequently in all these countries today.