What Shame Can Do

The Testimonies of Sexual Violence from Argentine

Abstract

Within the context of debates on how to take testimonies of crimes against humanity from the Argentine state terrorism, which strain conventional models of analysis and demand attentive and respectful responses, this paper explores the role of shame, an affect/emotion focused on particular presence in reports of sexual violence in concentration camps. On one hand, this shame has hindered or delayed the possibility of denouncing such crimes and/or redefining their meaning; on the other hand, its exposure in public instances of narrating violations or abuses articulates a victim's agency that destabilizes gender norms at the boundaries of what can be said/heard. Asking what shame can do as a route to explore seeks to recognize modes of agency of the survivor witnesses, which significantly contribute to the political construction of memories and the feminist archives of gender-based violence. Considering the resistance to these testimonies and analyzing the role of shame in them from the interpretative keys of the "affective turn," this paper examines the interplay between the dynamic mechanisms legitimizing gender oppression and the contingent logic of affect attribution. This opens up possibilities for reconfiguring what deserves to be remembered and constitutes a legacy.