Sexual Violence and Historical Memory Work: Reflections in Guatemala

For two decades, Spaniards have turned to forensic science as a mode of unearthing diverse forms of evidence that shed light on the mechanics of fascist repression that emerged during the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed it. Due to the lasting effects of Spain’s Amnesty Law, which prohibits defining Franco’s victims as victims of crime, these exhumation projects exist at the unruly boundaries of legal procedure. In the absence of courts equipped to manage the evidence exhumed and produced in these endeavors, photographs documenting the forensic process are not sequestered by the law. Instead, they are made to be seen. Drawing on what the author describes as subjunctive forensics, she analyzes the emergence of new bodies of knowledge —or what could be called the forensic archive— in order to understand how visual evidence that straddles the scientific and the political, particularly photography, is produced, circulated and safe-guarded in contemporary Spain. Drawing on ethnographic research and the experience of photographing mass grave exhumations, the author explores how shared forms of seeing are produced, acquired, and shared among the community of practice surrounding historical memory work. By focusing on how professional and skilled visions are constituted, the article argues that it is in the production, circulation, and display of forensic photography that Spaniards visualize an uncomfortable past while also imagining alternative political futures.

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Mediated memory work and resistant remembering of wartime sexual violence, 1992–1995

Feminist Media Studies ◽

10.1080/14680777.2018.1436903 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 325-328

Author(s):

Lara Lengel

Keyword(s):

Sexual Violence ◽

Memory Work

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A reflection on narrative based historical memory work in peacebuilding processes

Intervention ◽

10.1097/wtf.0000000000000168 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 230-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Theresa Edlmann

Keyword(s):

Historical Memory ◽

Memory Work

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Graphic Trauma

lambda nordica ◽

10.34041/ln.v27.743 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (2-3) ◽

pp. 102-128

Author(s):

Lisa Diedrich

Keyword(s):

Sexual Assault ◽

Sexual Violence ◽

Short Film ◽

Graphic Narrative ◽

The Third ◽

Working Through ◽

Memory Work ◽

Graphic Narratives ◽

Visual Description ◽

Feminist Practice

In this essay, I explore examples of what I call graphic trauma and the processof drawing as a form of working through the experience and event of sexual violence. I contend that comics and graphic narratives are a medium well-suited for rendering trauma, and the trauma of sexual violence in particular, as I show in an analysis of Una’s graphic narrative Becoming Unbecoming and Chanel Miller’s animated short film I Am With You. I argue that for both artists, drawing becomes a form of consciousness-raising, a collaborative feminist practice of memory work that attempts to create conditions – formal, therapeutic, and political – for women to say #MeToo and “we.” In my readings of Una’s and Miller’s draw-ing as working through sexual violence, I also demonstrate close verbal/visual description as a practice of care that keeps the testimony moving, drawing out the feminist practice of memory work in time and space and across modalities. A brief coda at the end of the essay offers an image of a hybrid figure from Miller’s graphic iconography and a concept and practice she calls “the third element.” I argue that this third element functions as a formal provocation for counter- modalities that change the story of sexual assault, creating a portal to resistance and healing.

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