https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n39.12

Paola C. Monkevicius
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1234-9747
Conicet/Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina
pmonkev@gmail.com

Abstract:

This article intends to explore the Afro-Argentinean production of memories and oblivions, when it is constituted as a tool in the struggle to be acknowledged by leader and activist women at the public scene. We consider narratives articulating the past as ways of discursive self-representation through which women fight over hegemonic senses permeating their modes of remembering, from both outside and inside the heterogeneous Afro-Argentinean collective. Based on the ethnographic work carried out in various meetings —commemorative for the most part—, we observe distinct overlapping ‘layers’ of meanings of the past. Those layers contain Afro-female memories, built around a private subalternized world. When the time is come to establish frameworks legitimated by truth, those memories find new spaces for interlocution, enabling and empowering them to confront ‘official’ versions.

Keywords: memories, Afro-Argentinean people, women, subalternization.