RESISTANCE, REACTIONS & MEMORY

Archives of resistance disrupt national memory with a people’s memory, memories of the disappeared, and those who, in their death were meant to be forgotten. The resistances, explored in this website show us that people and their memories are resilient. Even in the face of most gruesome atrocities and threats, people will speak out- and work to memorialize those who were disappeared by injustice. The framework in this webpage is inspired by las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who, in their siluetas physically delineate the space of the disappeared. To make present disappearance is what all these artists, authors and activists do. Their actions are the essence of resistance in producing alternative forms of knowledge -despite the endemic presence of hegemonic violence.

State violence refers to physical and psychological harm inflicted upon individuals and communities throughout a society carried out by military, para-military, and state organizations. Throughout this site, we can analyze histories of the ways that states mobilize violence as a disciplinary tool for social manipulation. We can see various examples of states using violence and suffering to teach fear, silence and control. Silence— as a central priority of a violent state, silence through censorship, through murder, through genocide, through inducing fear. Silence— with the ultimate goal of instituting national forgetting. As a consequence of state violence, people have created their own pedagogies, of resistance, of suffering, of collective memory.