When:
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 12:45 PM
-
2:30 PM
Memory, Performance, and the Politics of Urban Space
in Postwar Guatemala
A talk by
Andrew Bentley, Indiana University
In
Guatemala, as in other post-conflict Latin American countries, memory has
emerged as a main tenet of culture. Yet, performing memory is no simple act. From
1960 to 1996, the country suffered one of the longest periods of internal armed
conflicts in Latin American history, resulting in the deaths, disappearances,
or displacement of over half a million people. In the postwar era, memory is
the focal point of cultural production about urban space as people stage creative interventions to
make representational sense of violence. Following recent Latin American
cultural criticism about memory and performance (Taylor 2016, Lazzara 2017,
Murphy 2018), this presentation will move through different urban registers—the
street performances of Regina José Galindo and H.I.J.O.S. photographs of
disappeared persons in downtown Guatemala City—to understand memory as an
everyday life enactment of social justice.
Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA), and Latino-Latin American Studies Program (LLAS)
Contact Havva Karakas-Keles for more information: hkarakas@syr.edu