Ray’s Reading Response 11/04
Hy2873@nyu.edu
This week we have two short readings from Prof. Diana Taylor. One “YOU ARE HERE” discusses an event organized by H.I.J.O.S., a group of children whose parents were victims of the state-sponsored terror during the Dirty War in Argentina. It is a sense of haunting as the young people gather, which draws a direct connection between the current activists and the 1970s generation, which includes their parents and the victims of the dictatorship.
Another one “Tortuous Routes” describes the author – Taylor narrates her and her group’s visits to Villa Grimaldi and engages with the site as a space for memory, history, and political activism.
As a non-English user, it is hard for me to understand it comprehensively, but I can sense it when doing the readings. In my understanding, Villa Grimaldi is a place to torture and detain people who had issues with “Political Imprisonment” (p. 175). These two passages talk about political trauma and performance. The common sense of these passages is a retracing the past traumatic experiences. For “H.I.J.O.S.”, is a real political activity and the author is an ‘experienced’ observer at that time. However, the site of Villa Grimaldi is a historical place and there were no parade activities when Taylor visited there, thus Taylor and her group were both observers and performance makers who engaged in that gathering to view the historical place in that circumstance being present. After sensing these, I have a rudimentary understanding of what is political performances and how it can be. The passages let us have an experience of how to view traumatic history how it can be present now and how to avoid the trauma in the future. As Taylor mentioned, “It is about asking the next generation to understand their history” (p. 196).
When I first read the topic of “Transmitting Trauma” (p. 199), I was interested in why Matta needs to be paid by the Hemispheric Institute. Then, I used DEEPL translate to Chinese, I got more details from the “Medium” of Taylor’s body. Although I have not experienced it like that, as an actor experience, I can imagine how traumatic power was through Taylor’s body. “Trauma lives in the body, not in the archive” (p. 201).
I still have a question about why the researcher Matta needs to be paid when Taylor’s group visits there. I just want to know his psychological situation at that time. “He met with me several times and showed me his journals and the log books with the names of the military assigned to the different detention centers that he had investigated and compiled over the years” (p. 199). Is this the reason he had more research on it?
“Tortuous Routes”
Taylor, Diana. 2020. "Tortuous Routes: Four Walks through Villa Grimaldi" ¡Presente!: The Poetics of Presence. 175-202. Durham: Duke University Press,