Transfilial negotiations and palimpsestuous traces: queering postcolonial memory and intergenerational transmission

On disobedient daughters of perpetrator fathers: ‘Transfilial’ activisms across the Argentine human rights movement

“…Her smile, as she spoke, acknowledged both the intimate and public paradoxes implied in her argument. Indeed, queer thinking has been defined as a way of ‘doing’ that embraces contradictions as part of radical thinking (Quinan, 2021: 107). Liliana is a committed feminist activist, a filmmaker and a passionate advocate of tango queer.…”

“…Within this logic, acknowledging and confronting a sinister inheritance, Historias Desobedientes connects with other lineages in mourning. In doing so, they enable a queering of heritage that simultaneously reimagines the future; this is a future that is rebellious, non-binary, nonconsanguineous and self-determined (Quinan, 2021: 105).…”

“…The interfolding palimpsests of these two struggles are captured in Rita Segato’s conceptual fusion ‘femi-geno-cide’ (Segato, 2012, no page. The term, which positions gender-based violence on a continuum with state terrorism, explains the extent to which both types of violence are part of long-embedded categories of heteropatriarchal and (neo)colonial violence – real, structural and symbolic – that constitute the palimpsests that the disobedient daughters must negotiate in the process of ‘transfilial transmission’ (Quinan, 2021). The possibilities of alternative, transfilial attachments in the form of ‘queer bonds’ were crucial to enable them to ‘work through’ the historically negated linkage daughter-perpetrator-father.…”

Queering memory: Toward re-membering otherwise

“…The contributions to this special issue take up “queer” and “queering” in their multiple forms, not only in reference to gender and sexuality, but also as disordered, non-normative, and subversive potentialities that unsettle power relations and encapsulate contradictions. Moreover, a queer approach to memory has a potential to contest traditional lines of futurity and constructs an archive that is neither fixed nor teleological, allowing for a more extended processing of erasure, silencing, and trauma (Quinan, 2021). Building on this approach, the contributions collected here engage with art, archives, museums, television, performance, philosophy, and cultural artifacts, and both humanities- and social sciences–informed approaches are reflected in explorations of how queering memory can serve as a strategy for building alternative narratives that deeply impact which memories are privileged and which are hidden or silenced.…”

“…Although our approach here is not limited to communities and narratives that might be broadly captured under the label "LGBTQ," it is critical to acknowledge how the pasts (and presents) of marginalized genders and sexualities have long been marked by erasures, gaps, and silences. In this framework, memory has a unique capacity to reverse the flow of time and to undo expected chronologies, thereby queering temporality (Quinan, 2020(Quinan, , 2021.…”