I am not sure if the story I watched in the Brazilian news was about the disappeared in Brazil or Argentina, but I remembered they used technology to see how the disappeared during dictatorship would be today. AI programs that can predict how one person would look like older. It is amazing how we can see that the repetition of the Madres da Plaza de Maio kept their loved ones and the history alive and how that movement will survive through H.I.J.O.S.

As you brought in the text, “performance protest helps survivors cope with individual and collective trauma by using it to animate political denunciation”. Relating trauma and protest. Taking us back to the idea that a trauma needs to be verbalized and there are many ways of doing so, protesting being one of them. Plus transmitting to new generations, the trauma lived so anyone with empathy can relate to it. Also understanding that the performance of the trauma brings the past to the present, inserting it in the political agenda of society.  The idea of re-imprinting themselves – the victims – in the story that they tried to erase. Um epistemicídio, como cita Boaventura.

 

Nostalgia for the Light e um fragmento poético

E dele sobrou um pé
Do céu nasce o rastro do Atacama
Pintado com cálcio,
Abundante em corpos nossos
Desumanizados;
Ele que estava lá desde o início
Do Big ao Ben
E dele sobrou um pé
E estilhaços de afeto
Irrecuperáveis
No deserto.

(m.a.)