In
Marguerite Feitlowitz's book, A Lexicon
of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, she describes Argentina's "Dirty
War" in the late 70's that revolved around terror, torture, kidnappings,
and murder. One of the main points Feitlowitz makes revolves around the role
language played during this time. I thought it was very interesting to learn
that words received new meanings that centered on torture and the violence of
the time. She goes on to point out how language to this day is still recovering
from it. It was thought provoking to read about the impact torture and terror
has left on their society about thirty years after "The Process".
Because so many words have the idea of torture engrained in them, it was hard
for their language to recover after the Dirty War ended. Feitlowitz states that
Argentina cannot move on until their language has recovered. This brought up
something I had not considered before. We have addressed how torture affects
both the torturer and the one being tortured, however I never thought of it on
a broader scale about how torture can affect society as a whole. Because the
language still has remnants of this violent period, people cannot help but be
constantly reminded of a time of horror. Even if someone in particular was not
tortured, these words still carry the weight of a time when citizens could not
rely on their own government and lived in constant fear.
I'm glad you found something unexpected in the writings. Any tragic widespread event such as that can have an effect on the population as a whole, although I wonder whether Argentinians still use the 'lexicon of terror' not because they can't forget what happened, but perhaps because they've been desensitized. I'm not speaking, of course, about those who were tortured or lost family in the Dirty War, but rather of those who escaped it either by being in the right place at the right time or those who were too young or not yet born. And it's doubly insulting to the victims of the war to know that so many people carry the language of the war without realizing what the war itself might have meant. While it is good and right to move on after a holocaust, such as that of WWII, because it means the wounds have healed, it is still important to understand and appreciate how things have improved since then. And so it begs the question of what Argentina can do to eliminate the vocabulary associated with terrible times, and if young Argentinians are being educated enough in their country's history to know that these terms should be disbanded.
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