Femenine voices. Gender, memory and exile in women's testimonial narratives from Argentina

This article analyzes testimonial narratives: En estado de memoria de Tununa Mercado (1994), Una sola muerte numerosa by Nora Strejilevich (1997), Suenos sobrevivientes de una montonera: a pesar de la ESMA by Susana Jorgelina Ramus (2000), and Detras de los ojos by Graciela Fainstein (2006) as forms of a feminine writing in exile that resists the centers of power imposed by official culture. These women survivors of the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), through their accounts, reflect on memory, identity, trauma and writing in relation to their experiences as ex-detainees and exiles. The experience of exile appears as a condition characterized by multiple losses. However, it is precisely the identity instability caused by these losses that will push these women to write. Exile, as the psychological space from which they remember, becomes the trigger of a type of writing that aims towards the working through of trauma, and the construction of alternative feminine identities.