Modernist Figuration in the Representation of Argentina’s Recent Past

Abstract

In his latest writings Hayden White points out that the survivor's testimonies of limit events such as Holocaust provides the same kind of knowledge that literature and art. He calls Witness Literature to these sort of testimonies and they can be used as a source of information for comprehension of liminal experiences. Thus, he continued the debates opened by his propose to represent limit events using the modernist style, and before that with his claim for the renewal of the historical studies using the innovation provided by the art and the literature. From the perspective of these Hayden White´s works, in this work my aim is to consider critically the use of Witness Literature to represent limit events. I will analyze some representations elaborated by the sons of desaparecidos of the last Argentinean dictatorship to contrast his point of view.