‘Piercing memories’: Empty spaces in the histories of Argentinean families - personal reflections

This brief article particularly focuses on my ‘piercing memories’ of the 1976—83 military dictatorship when visiting a photography exhibition about the missing people. As an Argentinean born in Buenos Aires 30 years ago, I do not have many personal recollections of the period of dictatorship, yet the photographs of the exhibition act as external memory devices, enabling me to reconstruct and re-encounter both the largely forgotten and unarticulated personal experiences as well as the socially shared memories about what happened under the dictatorship. Despite the lack of first-hand knowledge and direct suffering — I do not have a missing relative - my ‘piercing memories’ of this traumatic period in Argentinean history are still very emotionally loaded and play a central role in defining my identity and personal motivations.