Staging the ‘Forgotten Genocide’ in the Aftermath of the Dirty War: Una bestia en la luna by Richard Kalinoski

The most recent Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) share legacies of state-sanctioned denial and impunity, which have left survivors and subsequent generations grappling with issues of memory and mourning. The intersection of these two collective memories in Argentina, home to a sizable Armenian population, offers a glimpse into how post-dictatorial and post-genocidal memory politics have borrowed from and shaped each other. This article examines the positive reception in Argentina of Una bestia en la luna by the U.S. playwright Richard Kalinoski. While the work treats the struggles of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide and sets its dramatic action in the U.S., Kalinoski’s use of photography to warn against the dangers of silencing memory engages non-Armenian spectators in postdictatorial Argentina

Consuming Argentina in the Name of Love: Cannibalism and Holy Communion in Carne by Eduardo Rovner

While Christian theologians have insisted on the sublime nature of the Eucharist, or symbolic consumption of Christ’s flesh and blood, other scholars have emphasized the contradictory urges of desire and aggression which characterize all metaphors of incorporation –– Communion, cannibalism, sexual intercourse, and eating –– in which the consumer seeks to absorb or subsume the Other. In Carne (1985), the Argentine dramatist Eduardo Rovner collapses all four acts of incorporation, as the work’s female protagonist permits her lover to consume her breast in order to insure his loyalty. However, while Carne underscores the unstable relationship between consumer/consumed and outside/inside, thereby problematizing the relation of power between the male consumer and the consumed feminine body, ultimately the work enacts the misogynist violence of the most recent military dictatorship. (AS, Article in English

Cooking, feeding, and eating : theatre and dictatorship in the Southern Cone

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Kansas, Spanish and Portuguese, 2002.This dissertation investigates dramatic responses to the military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, focusing specifically on the way in which theatre has drawn on the domestic space of the kitchen and the related acts of cooking, feeding, and eating as framing devices for the events of the political realm. By masking their socially critical stance toward the military regimes with metaphorical representation, the playwrights examined in this project eschewed state-instituted censorship. Furthermore, the dramatic use of the kitchen and its related acts echoes the discursive practice of the military governments in question, which veiled their political projects in metaphors of domesticity, thereby rhetorically conflating the private and public realms. Spanning a time frame from 1974 to 1993, these works use similar images as they constitute three different responses to the military regimes. The plays written during the early years of the dictatorships, Puesta en claro by Griselda Gambaro (Argentina, 1974) and Lo crudo, lo cocido y lo podrido by Marco Antonio de la Parra (Chile, 1978), portray agency on the part of the oppressed and/or a shift in power relations. La nona by Roberto Cossa (Argentina, 1977) and De a uno by Aida Bortnik (Argentina, 1983) were written further into the dictatorships, and center on the way in which seemingly innocent citizens become complicit in state-sponsored violence. Finally, the works written after the demise of the dictatorships, Carne by Eduardo Rovner (Argentina, 1985) and Cocinando con Elisa by Lucía Laragione (Argentina, 1993), offer a dark, chilling image of violence directed against the female body. While the recent academic revalorization of the domestic realm has focused on the kitchen as an isolated, idyllic site characterized by creativity and agency, I posit that this space must be reconsidered as a site that manifests and even determines the events of the public sphere, given the specific historical context of the dictatorships in Argentina and Chile

Staging the ‘Forgotten Genocide’ in the Aftermath of the Dirty War: Una bestia en la luna by Richard Kalinoski

The most recent Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) share legacies of state-sanctioned denial and impunity, which have left survivors and subsequent generations grappling with issues of memory and mourning. The intersection of these two collective memories in Argentina, home to a sizable Armenian population, offers a glimpse into how post-dictatorial and post-genocidal memory politics have borrowed from and shaped each other. This article examines the positive reception in Argentina of Una bestia en la luna by the U.S. playwright Richard Kalinoski. While the work treats the struggles of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide and sets its dramatic action in the U.S., Kalinoski’s use of photography to warn against the dangers of silencing memory engages non-Armenian spectators in postdictatorial Argentina

Voice to Vision VI: Tsitsernakaberd

University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. University of Minnesota Department of Art.University of Minnesota: Grant-in-Aid of Research and The Imagine Fund; Armenian Cultural Organization of Minnesota; Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council; The Howard B. Brin Jewish Arts Endowmen