On Mothers and Spiders: A face-to-face encounter with Argentina’s mourning

Abstract

In the wake of Argentina's dictatorship , this article revisits the activism developed by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo as a singular experience of live architecture. Over the last 30 years, this group of women has become the figure of an endless trauma, much like a monument, that has colonized the landscape of the central square of Buenos Aires in the name of the 30,000 missing. Assuming an experimental ontology that blurs the boundaries between the living and the non-living, I argue that the stubbornness attached to the Mothers' performance could be grasped in tune with Spider, a massive installation designed by the artist Louise Bourgeois. As Spiders, the Mothers have captured the viewers in their webs while transforming the personal losses into a collective experience of grief. Ultimately, the affective entity co-enacted by the Mothers-Spiders can teach us how memory is experienced and transmitted in the tremors of the spectatorial body, both as a shelter and a trap.

Mourning, Activism, and Queer Desires: Ni Una Menos and Carri’s Las hijas del fuego

“…Opposing Taylor’s argument, I have contended that a univocal association of military terror with femicide tended to restrict the nonnormative projections of the local experience of dictatorship, which to my mind was far more than a gender issue (Sosa, 2011; 2014). I have argued that the motto of the Mothers, “Nuestros hijos nos dieron la vida” (Our children gave us life) could be read as a radical questioning of a simply reproductive motherhood.…”

The 503 Days Of “El Piquete De Londres”: A Diasporic Space And Moment

“…Absent and present bodies came to visibly occupy the same space. As some forms of activism in Latin America have shown, the alliances forged while dealing with the losses involved in state-sponsored repression can even surpass what is conceived as human, proximate and fully knowable (e.g., Sosa 2011;Gordon 1997, 108-115). As we shall see, this liaison became performatively visible through forms of commemoration and mobilization in the city.…”

“…Inspired by Sosa's experimental approach to one of the most emblematic "performances of mourning" of Latin America-Las Madres de la plaza de Mayo (the mothers of the May Square) in Buenos Aires, Argentina-I have come to see this fleeting yet powerful act of spatial appropriation as one that brings to the open a "public secret" (Sosa 2011, 69, following Taussig 1999). Yet, far away from Latin America, it does so from a diasporic angle.…”

Le paysage relationnel du deuil

“…Par la répé-tition, semaine après semaine, de leur marche circulaire devant le palais du gouvernement argentin, ces mères constituent un des témoignages les plus saisissants des implications à la fois psychologiques, sociales et politiques des disparitions (Nelli, 2009;Sosa, 2011;Verstraeten, 2006Verstraeten, , 2011. Ces mères apparaissent à la fois actives dans le présent et figées dans un passé angoissant et sans réponses.…”

“…Si leur acharnement à théâtraliser leur peine leur a valu les critiques de ceux qui auraient souhaité qu'elles tournent définitive-ment la page, les manifestations de solidarité et sympathie qu'elles ont attiré soulignent que les vies perdues, effacées, submergées par un silence de terreur, ne sont pas seulement une question privée, mais une préoccupation collective qui trouve ses racines dans un sentiment commun de vulnérabilité et d'injustice (Burchianti, 2004). Le deuil irrésolu devient ainsi, grâce aux mères des disparus, la résistance ultime et la condition même de l'existence d'une communauté (Sosa, 2011).…”