Sexual Violence in the Argentinean Crimes against Humanity Trials

Cecilia Macón is a brilliant representative of a new generation of philosophers in Latin America—politically-engaged, feminist, and informed by the latest critical theory in cultural studies. Her analysis of sexual violence during the Argentinian military dictatorship brings new insights into the topic of victimage in the modern, bio-political treatment of the bodies of political subjects. -- Hayden White, University of California
In researching and writing this painful and timely book, Cecilia Macón is forced to reassess her preconceptions about gender, violence, subjectivity, survival, agency, victimhood, testimony and affects. In this brilliant examination of affect and sexual violence in the Argentine trials against humanity, Macón’s readers are made to reevaluate their own preconceptions in a reading experience that is as uncomfortable as it is rewarding. -- Andrea Noble, Durham University
Cecilia Macón’s insightful study of the accounts of sexual violence against female detenidas-desaparecidas during the last Argentine dictatorship sheds much-needed light on the complex emotions and queer temporalities of bearing witness to trauma. Rigorous, politically committed and provocative, this challenging book is essential reading for anyone interested not only in the legacies of state terror in Argentina, but also in the ways that these types of crimes against humanity are being exposed around the world. Macón’s original use of affect theory to challenge the victim/agent dichotomy and to illustrate the empowering and emancipatory outcomes of the testimonies of the survivors and the affects attached to them (shame, hope, fear, anger, guilt), opens up new and important paths of enquiry for scholarship on post-authoritarian societies. -- Jordana Blejmar, University of Liverpool