In H.I.J.O.S., Diana Taylor elaborates on the DNA of performance from the analysis of the Abuelas and Madres le da Plaza de Mayo, and, of course, H.I.J.O.S. The text explains the transmission of the traumatic memories, connecting first the trauma and the performance, then the biological memory and disappeared memories, to build an intricate discussion over military actions in Argentina and how these trauma-driven performances protests are connected cultural, genetic, political, and socioeconomically.
One of the five characteristics highlighted in the question on how performance transmits traumatic memory, “both make themselves felt affectively and viscerally in the present” (2003, p. 167), enlightens us towards a main issue over “present”. How could we live in the present if our past is full of individual and collective trauma? “Past as actually not past. Now. Here.” (2020, p. 184)
This reminds me of a (fruitful) dialogue I’ve heard between Ruth Estevez (an independent curator from NYC) and Professor André Lepecki (NYU). Estevez asks if “performance could give a second chance to history” and Lepecki answers that “just being fully engaged with the present, we may give history a second chance”.
Being part of a performance (as an artist, participant, or audience) is never passive. Even though you’re not seen, your commitment to the present in flesh and bones is required to understand what is happening. A performance like H.I.J.O.S., theatrical, reminds me of the pulse of the popular festival in the Brazilian streets, Carnival. Although the masses that join in Carnival blocks aren’t necessarily politically engaged, this kind of popular manifestation is usually frightening to the authorities. A body that knows the time to organize, to take the streets, and then to fully live the visceral moment of the party is a body that knows how to fight either.
Concerning the escraches, the guerrilla performance, they not only allow the singularity of each person to sum up their individuality as force to the crowd, but they also connect the singularity of each person to a collective trauma. As Villa Grimaldi showed us, “trauma-driven activism (like trauma itself) cannot simply be told or known; it needs to be enacted, repeated, and externalized through embodied practice” (2020, p. 189). The performance addresses the anger toward the crimes responsible as well as highlights what was silenced.
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Obs: In addition to this passage,
“Among the thirty thousand disappeared who were tortured and murdered, ten thousand were women, hundreds of them pregnant. They were killed as soon as they gave birth. Their children, born in captivity, were also disappeared—not killed, in this case, but adopted by military families.” (p. 169)
I’d like to share a show called “Cangaço Novo” (New Bandits), available on Amazon Prime. It’s a fictional narrative that dives into this plot in Brazil; the first episode is named “The Weight of Inheritance.”.
Taylor, Diana. 2003. ""You Are Here": H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of Performance" The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. 161-189. Durham: Duke University Press, Taylor, Diana. 2020. "Tortuous Routes: Four Walks through Villa Grimaldi" ¡Presente!: The Poetics of Presence. 175-202. Durham: Duke University Press,