|
Memory’s Turn
Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil
Rebecca J. Atencio
Winner, Alfred B. Thomas Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies
Critical Human Rights
Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus, Series Editors
“An extremely well-written, engaging, and interesting contribution to the scholarship on postdictatorial memory construction in Latin America. Atencio allows readers to see the multiple and layered ways in which postconflict societies construct and contest the meanings of the past.”
—Michael J. Lazzara, author of Chile in Transition
After twenty-one years of military dictatorship, Brazil returned to democratic rule in 1985. Yet over the following two decades, the country largely ignored human rights crimes committed by state security agents, crimes that included the torture, murder, and disappearance of those who opposed the authoritarian regime.
In clear and engaging prose, Rebecca J. Atencio tells the story of the slow turn to memory in Brazil, a turn that has taken place in both politics and in cultural production. She shows how testimonial literature, telenovelas, literary novels, theatrical plays, and memorials have interacted with policies adopted by the Brazilian state, often in unexpected ways. Under the right circumstances, official and cultural forms of reckoning combine in Brazil to produce what Atencio calls cycles of cultural memory. Novel meanings of the past are forged, and new cultural works are inspired, thus creating the possibility for further turns in the cycle.
The first book to analyze Brazil’s reckoning with dictatorship through both institutional and cultural means, Memory’s Turn is a rich, informative exploration of the interplay between these different modes of memory reconstruction.
 Rebecca J. Atencio is an assistant professor of Brazilian literary and cultural studies at Tulane University. Founder of the blog Transitional Justice in Brazil, she lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Praise
“Atencio's revelation of cultural and political synergies highlights the ambiguities inherent in recovering truths from the past, for memory and truth are not always the same thing.”
—Choice
“A major book that takes the field of human rights in a new direction. Atencio enables us to see a powerful dialectic of culture and institutions and its relevance for understanding human rights.”
—Steve J. Stern, series editor
“In very moving and elegant prose, Atencio demonstrates how oral testimonies, telenovelas, and theatrical plays allowed the memory of the dictatorship to remain present in the country’s politics and the everyday life of ordinary Brazilians, even in the midst of an official silence about the past.
”
—Latin American Research Review
Publicity and Press Kit Resources
Click here for current & upcoming UW Press events
Download high resolution cover, color
Download high resolution cover, b/w
Download high resolution author photo, color
Download high resolution author photo, b/w
All images are at least 2.25 inches at 300 dpi wide; current title covers are a minimum of 1500 px wide/6 inches wide at 300 dpi. Please contact us if you need a custom size.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
|
April 2014
LC: 2013041210 F
144 pp. 6 x 9
9 b/w photos
|
