Introductory description

How do societies heal the wounds caused by brutal state repression, violence and extensive human rights violations? How do they battle to search for truth, advocate for memory and seek justice? This module will approach these questions using the cases of Chile and Argentina through the combined lenses of Transitional Justice (TJ) and Memory studies.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1-2 What is Transitional Justice? Concepts, theories, critiques.
Key issues: Actors, mechanisms and phases of Transitional Justice (TJ), competing objectives of TJ, why is Latin America so important for TJ?
Preparatory reading/viewing:
Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden
What is Transitional Justice? International Center of Transitional Justice. www.ictj.org What Is Transitional Justice? | International Center for Transitional Justice (ictj.org)
Other bibliography
Naomi Roht-Arriaza (2006) “The New Landscape of Transitional Justice.” In Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice, edited by Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena, 1–16. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paul Gready & Simon Robins (2020) Transitional Justice and Theories of Change: Towards Evaluation as Understanding, 14 International Journal of Transitional Justice. 280-289 (stop before the section on “Impact and Evaluation” which we will read in Week 9).
Paige Arthur (2009) How “Transitions” Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice, 31 Human Rights Quarterly 321-367.
Christine Bell (2009) “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field.’” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (1): 5–27.
Rosemary Nagy (2008) Transitional Justice as Global Project: Critical Reflections, 29 Third World Quarterly. 275-289 (2008).
Priscilla Hayner (2010) Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Chapters 2 (Confronting Past Crimes: Transitional Justice and the Phenomenon of Truth Commissions) and 3 (Why a Truth Commission?).
Keck, Margaret E. y Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Week 3-4 The Politics of Memory
Key issues: relation between memory, history and TJ; memory as narrative, the role of personal testimonies in the construction of a collective memory, methods and critiques in memory studies, the concept of Postmemory.
Preparatory Reading/Viewing:
Andreas Huyssen (2015) “Memory Culture and Human Rights: A new Constellation”: in Historical Justice and Memory, edited by Klaus Neumann and Jana Thompson.
Michael Lazzara (2017), “The Memory Turn” in New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power, edited by Juan Poblete (2017).
Further bibliography
Elisabeth Jelin (2003) “Political Struggles for Memory” and “History and Social Memory” in State Repression and the labours of Memory.
Steve Stern (2016) “Memory: The Curious History of a Cultural Code Word” in Radical History Review 124.
Marianne Hirsch (2008) “The generation of Postmemory”, Poetics Today 29/1, PP103-128 OR “Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy” in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (ed), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1999).
Francesca Lessa (2013) “Theoretical Framework: Critical Junctures, Transitional Justice and Memory Narratives” in Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity.
Alexandra Barahona de Brito (2010) “Transitional Justice and Memory: Exploring Perspectives” South European Society and Politics (3) 359-376.
Rosoux, Valérie (2004) “Human Rights and the ‘Work of Memory’ in International Relations.” Journal of Human Rights 3 (2): 159–170.

Week 5-6 Chile: a watershed case for TJ
Key issues: Chile’s dictatorship, truth vs justice, transnational advocacy networks and the spiral model of human rights change, Pinochet in London and “irruptions” of memory, torture victims.
Preparatory viewing/reading:
Film Nostalgia de la luz, Nostalgia for the light, Patricio Guzmán
Book Voyager: constellations of memory, Nona Fernández
Further Bibliography:
Alexander Wilde (1999) Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy. Journal of Latin American studies, Vol 31, Issue 2.
Naomi Roht Arriaza (2005) The Pinochet effect: Transitional Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Chapters 1 & 2: “The Beginning” and “The adventures of Augusto Pinochet in the United Kingdom: A most civilised country”
Ropp and Sikkink (1999) “International norms and domestic politics in Chile and Guatemala” in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Risse, Ropp and Sikkink (eds).
Stern, Steve J. (2010). Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989- 2006. Duke University Press.
Lazzara , Michael J . 2006 . Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory . Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Lessa, Francesca , and Vincent Druliolle , eds. 2011 . The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dinges, John. 2004. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. Nueva York: New Press.
Francesca Lessa. 2022 The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human rights in South America.
Bernasconi, Oriana. (2019) Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting Atrocity.
Teresa Macías (2012) “ ´Tortured Bodies: The Biopolitics of Torture and Truth in Chile´”. The International Journal of Human Rights, 17 (1), 1-20.
Torture Charge Pits Professor Vs. Professor - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Michael Lazzara (2011) Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence, pp 109-176.

Week 7-8 Argentina: Global pioneer in the field of TJ
Key issues: Argentina´s dictatorship, Argentina´s trials and innovation in TJ, the problems and possibilities of portraying the disappeared, the role of gender and motherhood during military repression, Madres y abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, grandchildren and the right to identity.

Preparatory reading/viewing:
Film “Argentina: 1975”
Photography, Marcelo Brodsky “Fernando en la ESMA I” 1979. http://marcelobrodsky.com/good-memory-4-nando-my-brother/?lang=en

Further bibliography:
Kathryn Sikkink (2011) “Argentina: From Pariah State to Global Protagonist” in The Justice Cascade: How Human rights prosecutions are changing word politics”.
Susana Kaiser (2017) “Argentina’s trials: New Ways of Writing Memory”, in Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America, Roberta Villalón (eds)
Horacio Verbitzky, Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior.
Francesca Lessa (2012) “Transitional Justice in Argentina: 1983-2012” in Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity.
Vicki Bell (2010) “On Fernando´s Photograph: The Biopolitics of Aparición in Contemporary Argentina”. Theory, Culture and Society. Pp.69-89.
Lorenzo Tondo (2023) Adopted by their parents’ enemies: tracing the stolen children of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ | Human rights | The Guardian
Michael Lazzara (2013) “Kidnapped Memories: Argentina´s stolen babies tell their stories” in Journal of Human Rights 12.
Valentina Salvi (2017) “‘We are all victims’”: Changes in the narrative of National Reconciliation in Argentina” in Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America, edited by Roberta Villalón.
Alicia Gil (2005) The Flaws of the Scilingo Judgement. Journal of International Criminal Justice 3, no5.
Marguerite Feitlowitz, “Introduction: The Gentlemen’s Coup” in A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture.
Noa Vaisman (2014) “Memoria, Verdad y Justicia: The Terrain of Post dictatorship Social Reconstruction and the Struggle for Human Rights in Argentina” in The Human Rights Paradox: Universality and its Discontents, Steve Stern and Scott Straus.
Antonius G Robben, “How Traumatized Societies Remember: The Aftermath of Argentina’s Dirty War, Cultural Critique, 59.

Week 9. Blind spots in Transitional Justice: The case of Chilean exiles in the UK.
Key issues: forgotten actors in transitional justice, why has TJ tended to prioritise certain types of human rights violations, categories of victims.
Preparatory reading-viewing:
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes (2022) Recovering Refugee stories: Chilean Refugees and World University Service. Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol.35. Issue 3.
Research Project: “Voices of Humanitarianism: British Responses to Refugees from Chile”
Documentary: “Hora Chilena”
Further Bibliography
Parmentier et.al (2021) “Diaspora Communities in Transitional Justice: A hidden presence” in “In The Shadow of Transitional Justice”, edited by Guy Elcheroth and Nelofer de Mel. Routledge.
Vincent Druliolle and Roddy Brett “Introduction: Understanding the Construction of Victimhood and the Evolving Role of victims in Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding”, in The Politics of Victimhood in Post Conflict societies: Comparative and Analytical Perspectives
Tshepo Madlingozi, On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims, 2 J. HUM. RTS. PRAC. 208-228 (2010)
Kieran McEvoy & Kirsten McConnachie, Victimology in Transitional Justice: Victimhood, Innocence and Hierarchy, 9 EUR. J. CRIMINOL. 527–538 (2012).
Laura De Guissmé & Laurent Licata, Competition Over Collective Victimhood Recognition: When Perceived Lack of Recognition for Past Victimization Is Associated with Negative Attitudes Towards Another Victimized Group, 47 EUR. J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 148–150 (2017)
Daniela Jara (2016) Children and the Afterlife of State Violence: Memories of Dictatorship.
Week 10: The Legacy of Transitional Justice and Memory in Latin America
Key topics: key challenges and prospects, has TJ proven to be effective? Can we measure efficacy? what should we learn from Chile and Argentina’s Transitional Justice efforts?
Paige Arthur, ‘Notes from the Field: Global Indicators for Transitional Justice and Challenges in Measurement for Policy Actors’.
Pablo De Greiff, ‘The Future of the Past: Reflections on the Current State and Prospects of Transitional Justice’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOccBWg_pI
Olsen, Tricia D., Leight A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter. 2010. “The Justice Balance: When Transitional Justice Improves Human Rights and Democracy,” Human Rights Quarterly 32(4): 980-1007.
Lutz , Ellen , and Kathryn Sikkink . (2001). “The Justice Cascade: The Evolution and Impact of Foreign Human Rights Trials in Latin America.” Chicago Journal of International Law 2 (1): 1–33.
Kathryn Sikkink (2011) “The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Latin America”, in The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Understand the historical and conceptual underpinnings of memory and transitional justice processes.
• Understand the legacy of violence and human rights abuses in Chile and Argentina.
• Understand the relationship between political and cultural responses to trauma.
• Explore problems of memory in the context of the political legacies of military dictatorship
• Critically assess the impact of memory and transitional justice mechanisms in Chile and Argentina
• Develop analytical skills when working with literary texts, films and other source materials.
• Relate the Chilean and Argentinean case to other contexts where traumatic historical events and collective memories are at play.

Indicative reading list

Naomi Roht-Arriaza (2006) “The New Landscape of Transitional Justice.” In Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice, edited by Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena, 1–16. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paul Gready & Simon Robins (2020) Transitional Justice and Theories of Change: Towards Evaluation as Understanding, 14 International Journal of Transitional Justice. 280-289 (stop before the section on “Impact and Evaluation” which we will read in Week 9).
Paige Arthur (2009) How “Transitions” Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice, 31 Human Rights Quarterly 321-367.
Christine Bell (2009) “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field.’” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (1): 5–27.
Rosemary Nagy (2008) Transitional Justice as Global Project: Critical Reflections, 29 Third World Quarterly. 275-289 (2008).
Priscilla Hayner (2010) Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Chapters 2 (Confronting Past Crimes: Transitional Justice and the Phenomenon of Truth Commissions) and 3 (Why a Truth Commission?).
Keck, Margaret E. y Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Week 3-4 The Politics of Memory
Key issues: relation between memory, history and TJ; memory as narrative, the role of personal testimonies in the construction of a collective memory, methods and critiques in memory studies, the concept of Postmemory.
Preparatory Reading/Viewing:
Andreas Huyssen (2015) “Memory Culture and Human Rights: A new Constellation”: in Historical Justice and Memory, edited by Klaus Neumann and Jana Thompson.
Michael Lazzara (2017), “The Memory Turn” in New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power, edited by Juan Poblete (2017).
Further bibliography
Elisabeth Jelin (2003) “Political Struggles for Memory” and “History and Social Memory” in State Repression and the labours of Memory.
Steve Stern (2016) “Memory: The Curious History of a Cultural Code Word” in Radical History Review 124.
Marianne Hirsch (2008) “The generation of Postmemory”, Poetics Today 29/1, PP103-128 OR “Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy” in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (ed), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1999).
Francesca Lessa (2013) “Theoretical Framework: Critical Junctures, Transitional Justice and Memory Narratives” in Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity.
Alexandra Barahona de Brito (2010) “Transitional Justice and Memory: Exploring Perspectives” South European Society and Politics (3) 359-376.
Rosoux, Valérie (2004) “Human Rights and the ‘Work of Memory’ in International Relations.” Journal of Human Rights 3 (2): 159–170.

Week 5-6 Chile: a watershed case for TJ
Key issues: Chile’s dictatorship, truth vs justice, transnational advocacy networks and the spiral model of human rights change, Pinochet in London and “irruptions” of memory, torture victims.
Preparatory viewing/reading:
Film Nostalgia de la luz, Nostalgia for the light, Patricio Guzmán
Book Voyager: constellations of memory, Nona Fernández
Further Bibliography:
Alexander Wilde (1999) Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy. Journal of Latin American studies, Vol 31, Issue 2.
Naomi Roht Arriaza (2005) The Pinochet effect: Transitional Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Chapters 1 & 2: “The Beginning” and “The adventures of Augusto Pinochet in the United Kingdom: A most civilised country”
Ropp and Sikkink (1999) “International norms and domestic politics in Chile and Guatemala” in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Risse, Ropp and Sikkink (eds).
Stern, Steve J. (2010). Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989- 2006. Duke University Press.
Lazzara , Michael J . 2006 . Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory . Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Lessa, Francesca , and Vincent Druliolle , eds. 2011 . The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dinges, John. 2004. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. Nueva York: New Press.
Francesca Lessa. 2022 The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human rights in South America.
Bernasconi, Oriana. (2019) Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America: Documenting Atrocity.
Teresa Macías (2012) “ ´Tortured Bodies: The Biopolitics of Torture and Truth in Chile´”. The International Journal of Human Rights, 17 (1), 1-20.
Torture Charge Pits Professor Vs. Professor - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Michael Lazzara (2011) Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence, pp 109-176.

Week 7-8 Argentina: Global pioneer in the field of TJ
Key issues: Argentina´s dictatorship, Argentina´s trials and innovation in TJ, the problems and possibilities of portraying the disappeared, the role of gender and motherhood during military repression, Madres y abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, grandchildren and the right to identity.

Preparatory reading/viewing:
Film “Argentina: 1975”
Photography, Marcelo Brodsky “Fernando en la ESMA I” 1979. http://marcelobrodsky.com/good-memory-4-nando-my-brother/?lang=en

Further bibliography:
Kathryn Sikkink (2011) “Argentina: From Pariah State to Global Protagonist” in The Justice Cascade: How Human rights prosecutions are changing word politics”.
Susana Kaiser (2017) “Argentina’s trials: New Ways of Writing Memory”, in Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America, Roberta Villalón (eds)
Horacio Verbitzky, Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior.
Francesca Lessa (2012) “Transitional Justice in Argentina: 1983-2012” in Memory and Transitional Justice in Argentina and Uruguay: Against Impunity.
Vicki Bell (2010) “On Fernando´s Photograph: The Biopolitics of Aparición in Contemporary Argentina”. Theory, Culture and Society. Pp.69-89.
Lorenzo Tondo (2023) Adopted by their parents’ enemies: tracing the stolen children of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’ | Human rights | The Guardian
Michael Lazzara (2013) “Kidnapped Memories: Argentina´s stolen babies tell their stories” in Journal of Human Rights 12.
Valentina Salvi (2017) “‘We are all victims’”: Changes in the narrative of National Reconciliation in Argentina” in Memory, Truth and Justice in Contemporary Latin America, edited by Roberta Villalón.
Alicia Gil (2005) The Flaws of the Scilingo Judgement. Journal of International Criminal Justice 3, no5.
Marguerite Feitlowitz, “Introduction: The Gentlemen’s Coup” in A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture.
Noa Vaisman (2014) “Memoria, Verdad y Justicia: The Terrain of Post dictatorship Social Reconstruction and the Struggle for Human Rights in Argentina” in The Human Rights Paradox: Universality and its Discontents, Steve Stern and Scott Straus.
Antonius G Robben, “How Traumatized Societies Remember: The Aftermath of Argentina’s Dirty War, Cultural Critique, 59.

Week 9. Blind spots in Transitional Justice: The case of Chilean exiles in the UK.
Key issues: forgotten actors in transitional justice, why has TJ tended to prioritise certain types of human rights violations, categories of victims.
Preparatory reading-viewing:
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes (2022) Recovering Refugee stories: Chilean Refugees and World University Service. Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol.35. Issue 3.
Research Project: “Voices of Humanitarianism: British Responses to Refugees from Chile”
Documentary: “Hora Chilena”
Further Bibliography
Parmentier et.al (2021) “Diaspora Communities in Transitional Justice: A hidden presence” in “In The Shadow of Transitional Justice”, edited by Guy Elcheroth and Nelofer de Mel. Routledge.
Vincent Druliolle and Roddy Brett “Introduction: Understanding the Construction of Victimhood and the Evolving Role of victims in Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding”, in The Politics of Victimhood in Post Conflict societies: Comparative and Analytical Perspectives
Tshepo Madlingozi, On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims, 2 J. HUM. RTS. PRAC. 208-228 (2010)
Kieran McEvoy & Kirsten McConnachie, Victimology in Transitional Justice: Victimhood, Innocence and Hierarchy, 9 EUR. J. CRIMINOL. 527–538 (2012).
Laura De Guissmé & Laurent Licata, Competition Over Collective Victimhood Recognition: When Perceived Lack of Recognition for Past Victimization Is Associated with Negative Attitudes Towards Another Victimized Group, 47 EUR. J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 148–150 (2017)
Daniela Jara (2016) Children and the Afterlife of State Violence: Memories of Dictatorship.
Week 10: The Legacy of Transitional Justice and Memory in Latin America
Key topics: key challenges and prospects, has TJ proven to be effective? Can we measure efficacy? what should we learn from Chile and Argentina’s Transitional Justice efforts?
Paige Arthur, ‘Notes from the Field: Global Indicators for Transitional Justice and Challenges in Measurement for Policy Actors’.
Pablo De Greiff, ‘The Future of the Past: Reflections on the Current State and Prospects of Transitional Justice’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOccBWg_pI
Olsen, Tricia D., Leight A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter. 2010. “The Justice Balance: When Transitional Justice Improves Human Rights and Democracy,” Human Rights Quarterly 32(4): 980-1007.
Lutz , Ellen , and Kathryn Sikkink . (2001). “The Justice Cascade: The Evolution and Impact of Foreign Human Rights Trials in Latin America.” Chicago Journal of International Law 2 (1): 1–33.
Kathryn Sikkink (2011) “The Effects of Human Rights Prosecutions in Latin America”, in The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics.

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Hispanic culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of Hispanic cultural exchanges will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.