The Minefields of Memory

...5. Jorge Luis Borges, "Funes el memorioso," in La muerte y la brijula (Buenos Aires: Emece, 1951), pp...

...The construction of meaning and understanding is part of a cultural process that takes place at the symbolic and subjective levels...

...Still others are ready to look at the past frustrated b) in order to glorify the City Counc "order and progress" that dictatorship presumably secured...

...Such an analysis will not give rise to a new interpretation of what happened in the past, nor will it provide elements or materials for the process of constructing historical memories...

...The telling of stories previously unknown and the public recognition of events that had been partially or totally negated or removed from consciousness had an intense emotional impact on large sectors of society, not only those who had personal memories of repression, but also those who, for a variety of reasons, had not been previously exposed to these issues...

...Amnesty laws established by the military or negotiated as part of transitions to democracy institutionalized impunity for those who violated human rights...

...Force or administrative measures to obstruct the establishment of such physical markers cannot erase personalized memories, but they often drive the bearers of those memories to seek out alternative channels of expression...

...Recently, for example, local organizers in Ledesma, in the Argentine province of Jujuy, organized a Workshop on Human Rights and Culture in commemoration of the July 1976 "blackout of terror," when sugar workers were brutally repressed by the military...

...The researcher must start from the premise that memory is always selective, and that total memory is impossible and deadening, as Jorge Luis Borges' story of Funes the Memorious, who has lost the ability to forget and is condemned to remember everything, so vividly conveys...

...he first approach is to examine the struggles over dates, commemorations and anniversaries...

...No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998 0 0 23REPORT ON MEMORY Many of the victims and their advocates demand a complete accounting of what took place under dictatorial regimes and the corresponding punishment of the perpetrators of abuses, a demand evoked by the phrase "Nunca Mds" ("Never Again"), which has become a continent-wide slogan for the struggle against impunity...

...To remi- claim they did not know what was happening...

...al., Juicio, castigos y memorias, pp...

...The task of analyzing memory is not to render a narrative of the past...

...Faced with the "reality" of reliving fears and disturbing feelings, many people began to ask themselves how the violence, the disappearances, the The facade of El Olimpo, one of the concentration camps of the Argentine military regime...

...We can remember because someone receptions of memories that are fragmented and conhas remembered before us, challenging death and ter- tradictory, made up of pieces, shreds and patches of ror on the basis of their memory.' 5 one layer on top of another, of traces, monuments and Societal forgetting is also a collective, intersubjec- amnesias...

...But there is more to this matter: Who has the authority to decide what the "proper" ways to remember are...

...Pierre Nora, ed., Les Lieux de la Memoire (Paris: Ed...

...Rather, it involves analyzing the process of societal remembering (and forgetting) and examining the various levels and layers in which it operates...

...By way of illustration, let me take up the fate of the actual sites where dictatorial repression took place...

...Confrontations arise as to the con- tent of democracy itself, while persistent social and economic inequality, continuing instances of police brutality, weak judicial institutions, and attempts to twist and bend the interpretation of constitutional principles to suit the economic and political interests of the powerful make democracy in the region fragile at best...

...Investigations into human rights crimes committed during military rule are ongoing in Spain and other European nations, for example, and the head of the Argentine junta, former General Jorge Rafael Videla, was jailed this past June on charges of aiding in the kidnapping of children during that country's dirty war...

...Now, 25 years after the coup and several years after the transition, Congress is discussing whether or not the date should remain a holiday...

...When dealing with the recent past in Latin America, the ways in which memory and oblivion are incorporated in the present varies from country to country, and different groups and institutions within each society hold different opinions on the need to remember or to forget...

...The style of music he plays--the cuarteto cordobis-is not a genre that is fit to commemorate the disappeared, they complained, because it is too light, festive and frivolous...

...Such discussions must also recognize that there are multiple versions of what happened and why, and that there are various ways to name the past and to portray the "truth...

...1-19...

...countries that have recently emerged from periods of violence and repression...

...Such was the case with the Punta Carretas prison in Montevideo-the site of years of systematic torture of political prisoners during that country's military dictatorship--that was transformed into a modem shopping mall...

...9 Governments at both the local and national levels have rarely approved initiatives to preserve sites to commemorate or remember repression, yet social actors keep insisting...

...19-99...

...Controversies and political conflict around monuments, museums and memorials are plentiful everywhere, from Bariloche to Berlin...

...They involve a variety of activities...

...Elizabeth Jelin and Susana G. Kaufman, Layers of Memories...

...For the most part, citizens no longer live in fear of systematic state repression, and disappearances and torture have become part of the authoritarian past...

...out in the s out in the sc oth in commemorations around historically significant dates and in the establishment of memory sites, there is usually a political struggle whose main contenders are the societal forces calling for remembrance and those calling for oblivion and erasure...

...Facts are reorganized, existing perspectives and schemes of interpretation are shaken and unsettled, voices of new and old generations ask questions, tell stories, create spaces for interaction and share what they experienced, what they heard, what they once silenced...

...71-81...

...What happens when a proposal to physically situate the act of remembering in a memorial or a monument is unsuccessful, or when memory cannot be materialized in a specific site...

...Inter-cohort differences among those who b ai e p a r lived through repression at different times in their lives, and between them and younger people who have no personal memories of repression, produce distinct social dynamics vis-a-vis the memory issue...

...The issue of turning unique, personal and recognize nontransferable feelings into public and collective meanings experience o is then left open and active...

...Other dates may have more personal or private significance, such as the anniversary of an abduction or the birthday of someone who was killed during the dictatorship...

...Another goal of building such monuments is for the sake of identification and identity, a way of sharing with others who experienced repression either directly or indirectly...

...In that arena, there are continuing conflicts about who can claim and say what...

...Monuments and museums, plaques and other markers are some of the ways in which governments as well as social actors try to embody memories...

...The question of the interrelation between the various layers of individual and collective memory permeates the following discussion but will not be systematically addressed...

...The same event-the military coup, in this instance-is remembered and commemorated in different ways by right and left, by those who support the military and by those linked to the struggle for truth and justice...

...On the significance of the gender-related dimension of memory struggles, see Judith Filc, Entre el parentesco y la politica: Familia ydictadura, 1976-1983 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Bilbos, 1997...

...It alludes to the capacity of preservtive, or a fault line in the intergenerational process of ing the past, but that capacity necessarily implies partransmission...

...the proposal...

...The Minefields of Memory 1. This article is based on ongoing research and reflection with Susana G. Kaufman...

...53-68...

...And the succession of generations there and no longer is, the representation of something involves, unavoidably, the creation of new readings of that has been erased, silenced or denied...

...Throughout the year, and particularly during the month of March, commemorations permeated the public sphere...

...This camp operated during 1978 and 1979 in a building that now houses an automobile registration office of the Federal Police...

...For a young person who was raised during dictatorship, such events may be remembered as part of "normal" life, while for an adult, they may evoke the memory of fear and panic...

...Some dates may have very broad significance-such as September 11 in Chile or March 24 in Argentina, the dates of the coups that ushered in military dictatorships in both countries in 1973 and 1976 respectively...

...Others, claiming they are concerned above all with the functioning of democratic institutions, emphasize the need to focus on the future rather than on the past...

...Koonz, "Between Memory and Oblivion: Concetration Camps in German Memory," in Joseph R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, pp...

...Established as a national holiday by the military dictatorship, the date continues to generate political confrontation...

...5 Below I will discuss some of the possible approaches to the study of remembering and forgetting...

...Collective remembrances then become eration to the next, from one period to another, from politically relevant, as an instrument for legitimizing those who experienced the events to others who did discourse, as tools for establishing collective identities not...

...At the same time, however, life in these weak democracies is quite different than it was during the years of military rule...

...Yet paradoxically, if social legitimacy to ruth" and express collective memory is ways of assigned to those who had a personal experience of sufferig is played ing, that same symbolic authority can derive, consciously or cietal arena...

...There may be historical moments in which there are rm El Olimoo-- greater levels of consensus, when a single narran camp during tive is more pervasive or dominant...

...The physical remembrance becomes memory as well as the substance and material for future memory...

...unconsciously, into claims that monopolize the meaning and the content of memory and truth.1 2 If the relatives of victims have special claims to the truth, this authority may obstruct the mechanisms of social involvement and the intergenerational transmission of memory-the enlargement of the "we"-by not allowing for the reinterpretation of the meaning of the passed-on experiences...

...2. Carlos H. Acuhfia and Catalina Smulovitz, "Adjusting the Armed Forces to Democracy: Successes, Failures, and Ambiguities in the Southern Cone," in Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg, eds., Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in Latin America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), pp...

...Other council members effectively boycotted the vote, and the Council was only able to vote to recommend rather than The o mandate the implementation of that cert...

...and Elizabeth Jelin and Susana G. Kaufman, Layers of Memories: Twenty Years After in Argentina (Forthcoming, 1998...

...Yet any meaningful discussion of the subject must begin from the premise that there is no single interpretation of the past but rather a conflict about its very nature...

...The meaning of dates, moreover, changes over time as the different visions of the past crystallize and as new generations and new actors give them new meanings...

...They are also an integral part of democratic institution-building...

...Elizabeth Jelin is a sociologist and a researcher at the University of Buenos Aires and the National Council of Scientific and Tech- nological Research (CONICET...

...101-146...

...nother arena of societal struggles over memory centers on the physical markers of past violence and repression...

...The analysis focuses on the relationship between some extremely painful "hard facts"-physical violence, encounters and confrontations in lived experience-and the curri il rent and ongoing processes of searching for meaning...

...Commemorations of this sort are often highly conflictual...

...Some are made explicit by their proponents, while others remain hidden, unconscious or unintended...

...This is probably one element to explain the persistence and insistence of the human rights movement in Argentina, as well as the incorporation of new generations into the movement via the organization of the children of the disappeared in the newly created group HIJOS...

...After languishing for several months, the project was taken up again in early 1996, when the council members who introduced the project called for the inauguration of the museum on March 22, two days before the twentieth anniversary of the 1976 military coup...

...This is my way of expressing what I feel," responded Jimdnez...

...Herein lies a double historical danger: on the one hand, oblivion and institutional void, and on the other, the ritualized 28 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEMORY repetition of the horrifying and tragic events of the past, which effectively forecloses the possibility of creating new meanings and of incorporating new subjects...

...For many social activists in Argentina, the struggle for memory is taken for granted and has become an unquestionable premise of their lives...

...Other social forces, meanwhile, try to erase and transform these physical markers, as if by changing the shape and function of a place one can banish it from memory...

...Such struggles over monuments and reminders of repression can be seen in several Latin American 26 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEMORY BEFORE AND AFTER: The Punta Carretas prison-where political prisoners were routinely tortured during Uruguay's military regime-is now a modern shopping mall...

...In general, monuments and memorials carry a multiplicity of meanings...

...This inquiry centers on how memory and oblivion are produced and constructed and the ways in which societies incorporate (or exclude) their conflictive and painful past into the present...

...Even personal memory requires the participation of others: it is group support that gives memory cohesion and structure 3 When given the opportunity to reminisce, as in an interview situation, people Children and grandchildren of the disappeared protest in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires...

...Particularly in societies emerging from dictatorship, there is seldom consensus on which dates are to be commemorated and for what purpose...

...The repression, oblivion that certain sectors seek to impose can have the over the " paradoxical effect of multiply- "proper ing memory, making the questions and the debates about the rememberi past more salient...

...8. There are intercultural variations in the ways societies deal with history, memory, monuments, sites and commemorations...

...13-38...

...The issue here is whether there are standards of remembrances and memorials...

...While my first-hand research is on Argentina, this paper raises broader questions about the study of the historical memory of repression in the process of democratization...

...Analyzing the processes of reconstructing and making diverse and multiple pasts meaningful requires an examination of the various layers and levels of memory...

...Who embodies true memory...

...Passerini, we are actually dealing with a memory of a When analyzing memory, we are dealing with mulmemory, a memory that is possible because it evokes tiple intersubjectivities, multiple transmissions and another memory...

...To show their support for the initiative, human rights groups called for a gathering on March 22 at El Olimpo to paint a mural that would mark the symbolic inauguration of the Nunca Mis Museum of Memory...

...258-280...

...Both are the past...

...4. The debates about the appropriate forms of commemoration of the 500 years of 1492 illustrated that the interpretation of the past is a matter of social controversy even after a long period of time has elapsed...

...A different kind of struggle takes place within the "memory camp" over the "appropriate" forms or means of remembering and over the legitimacy of actions on behalf of the victims of repression...

...Their motto is "Remember...

...6. Pfgina 12 (Buenos Aires), March 23, 1996, p. 5. 7. Nicholas Howe, "Berlin: Monuments and Memory," Dissent (Winter, 1998), pp...

...Yet this process does not take place in a vacuum-it is rooted in the "hard facts" of the recent past...

...Yet this requires leaving open the What, then, are forgetting and reminiscing...

...In Argentina in 1995, for example, a group of city councilmen in Buenos Aires introduced a proposal which called for turning the building that was one of the dictatorship's clandestine concentration camps, known as El Olimpo, into a Museum of Memory...

...It is the presence gain diverse meanings in different contexts and cirof the absence, the representation of what was once cumstances...

...jects of reminiscing...

...One approach is to study societal efforts to establish timerelated markers of memory, such as commemoration dates and anniversaries...

...For those social actors who frame their current struggles around the very events commemorated by the date in question, the same date may have different meanings...

...Insofar as there are different interpretations of the past, public dates are likely to be the object of dispute or conflict...

...History is, in fact, part of the symbolic and intersubjective experiences...

...Interpretations and explanations of the ticipation in the struggle for giving meaning and exerpast cannot be automatically conveyed from one gen- cising power...

...7 Spatial markers of memory are attempts to make statements and affirmations, they are facts and gestures, ilivion material spaces with a political, in sectors collective and public meaning...

...Claudia Koonz discusses the current debate about memorials in concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe, showing that struggles over memory grow more, rather than less, intense as time passes...

...Dates and anniversaries are critical junctures in which memory is activated...

...That narrative ty war--into a will usually be the story memory were of the winners of historical conflicts and battles, conservative but there will always be members...

...Testimonies and personalized narratives were made public, giving victims and family members an opportunity to speak about events that had been silenced or forgotten...

...The proposals to turn them into memorials seek to transform these places into bearers of collective and public memory...

...2 In spite of amnesty laws and impunity, however, social activists continue pushing for new trials, both domestically and internationally...

...In a few instances, physical memorial sites have been established, as in the case of the Parque de la Paz-formerly the torture and detention center of Villa Grimaldi-in Santiago...

...It implies a social cleavage, a rupture tive light-as a process of searching for the roots of between individual memory and public and/or collec- identity-the space of memory becomes a space of tive practices that may become ritualized and repeti- political struggle...

...Micheline Enrlquez, "La envoltura de memoria y sus huecos," in Didier Anzier, ed., Las envolturas psiquicas (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 1990...

...Adriana Bergero and Fernando Reati, eds., Memoria colectiva y politicas de olvido: Argentina y Uruguay, 1970-1990 (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1997), p. 27...

...1 4 To forget, on the other hand, ries, because the "same" story and the "same" truth does not imply a void or a vacuum...

...Throughout the region, efforts to bring human rights violators to trial have had little success...

...Something similar had happened the year before, when a papier mach6 tree covered with photographs of the victims built in front of El Atl6tico by activists was later burned to the ground by molotov cocktails...

...Year after year, on such dates, the political struggles of the past and of the present unfold simultaneously...

...Those who call for commemoration often find themselves pitted against those who act "as if nothing has happened here" and who, in some cases, demand recognition of the "heroism" and "patriotism" displayed by the agents of state terrorism...

...Gallimard, 1987...

...They are less inclined to revisit the painful experiences of the Efforts to transf authoritarian repression and may seek to imple- a concentratic ment policies of oblivion, Argentina's di usually through a discourse of "reconcilia- Museum of tion...

...This was the case of the memorials erected at the building known as El Atl6tico, another clandestine detention center in downtown Buenos Aires...

...The second is to look at the spatial dimensions of memory, expressed through sites and monuments...

...6 Such moments of contestation over commemorations and past moi memorials are markers which provide clues to the processes of remembrance at the subjective and the symbolic levels, where the memories of different social actors are enacted and become "the present," making it easier to analyze the construction of collective, social and public memories...

...So as not to repeat...

...They may also function as a key to the intergenerational transmission of historical memory, though that transmission and its meaning cannot be guaranteed a priori...

...In the cultural context of postdictatorship Argentina, for instance, there are indications that the claim to truth has been essentialized in iere are no biology and in the body...

...There is no rest for such men and women because memory has not been "deposited" anywhere...

...That recent past, however, is still very much part of the present...

...Where constitutional governments repealed such laws-the most well-known case being Argentina-trials were held and punishment was meted out, but only for a few of the top military officials...

...Finally, monuments are historical documents...

...In Chile, September 11-the date of the 1973 coup and the suicide of Socialist President Salvador Allende-is such a contested date...

...There is Ih a 1 f t t "I n D( a struggle over the "ownership" of memory, over who has the power to decide what the content of memory should be...

...Another possible approach will be highlighted in a brief and preliminary discussion of 24 NMI1A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACtA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS o 24REPORT ON MEMORY "legitimacy" struggles over memory-who has what rights to determine what should be remembered and how...

...There are also those who "did not know," who did not see-the bystanders of horror...

...I do not know how to do otherwise...

...tion...

...it Insofar as remains only in the minds and official ch hearts of the people...

...What should become evident is that there are multiple layers and levels of memories-overlapping and interrelated, individual and collective, subjective and institutionalized-and intense struggles and confrontations are embedded within each of these layers...

...3 The premise is that memory and oblivion, or remembering and social amnesia-and its institutionalized manifestation as amnesty-are an integral part of the process of building identities, both at the individual and the collective levels...

...other stories, other interpretations, other memories...

...When historical memory is seen in a collective affair...

...They are public and collective, insofar as they convey and affirm a feeling of belonging to a community, sharing an identity rooted in a tragic and traumatic history...

...The persistence of such cases after more than 20 years is undoubtedly linked to the enduring nature of human rights movements and to the resilience of memory itself...

...8 These are political in at least two impose senses...

...Often, the opposition they encounter stiffens their resolve to achieve their objectives...

...There is nisce is to forge a new pact between past and present, no a priori guarantee that a given meaning will result...

...But during the night, the plaques were destroyed, the engraved names were painted over, and the monument was torn down...

...3. Elizabeth Jelin, "La politica de la memoria: El movimiento de derechos humanos y la construcci6n democratica en Argentina," in Carlos Acufia et...

...Luisa Passerini, "Introduction," in Luisa Passerini, ed., Memory and Totalitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp...

...Thus, for greater democratization...

...emory is always an intersubjective relationship based on the act of transmitting and reinterpreting...

...In the words of Luisa political struggle of each era, of each present...

...4 There are, therefore, active and ongoing political struggles about meaning-about the meaning of what went on in the past and also about the meaning of memory itself...

...Its sponsors argued that if the project were not approved during the commemorations of the coup, it would never materialize...

...Relatives and friends of victims publish remembrance ads in newspapers, authors publish books analyzing the politics of remembering and forgetting, and local groups propose that streets and parks be renamed after victims of repression or well-known human rights activists...

...Insofar as there are no official channels that recognize the recent experience of violence and repression, the struggle over the "truth" and "proper" ways of remembering is played out in the societal arena...

...As Yosef Yerushalmi notes, the past has to be and communities of belonging, and as justification for actively transmitted to the next generation, and that the activities of social movements in their struggles generation has to accept that past as meaningful...

...These initiatives are usually spearheaded by human rights organizations with the support of a wide array of social organizations, including labor unions, professional organizations, student and parent school associations, some churches, and progressive political parties...

...They may also serve as a vehicle for the intergenerational transmission so that memory does not die with those who experienced it "in their own flesh and blood...

...In Argentina, for example, Carlos Jimdnez, a pop singer who wrote a song about a friend who was disappeared, was sharply criticized by some members of the human rights movement...

...Thus, there are competing and conflicting interpretations of the past in societies emerging from periods of violence and trauma, fostering intense social, cultural and political struggles about the place and content of memory in democratization processes...

...This refers to the "ownership" of historical memory or, from an actor's perspective, how the collective "we" that remembers the past is constituted-who belongs, who is left out, and how to incorporate new generations...

...When efforts of those who seek to materialize memory are blocked by other social forces, the desire and the will of these actors come into public view...

...and Carlos H. Acuhia and Catalina Smulovitz, "Militares en la transici6n argentina: Del gobierno a la subordinaci6n constitucional," in Carlos Acufia et al., Juicio, castigos y memorias: Derechos humanosyjusticia en la politica argentina (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visi6n, 1995), pp...

...9. The editors of one volume on collective memory and the policies of oblivion portray their book as both a "homage to all those who carry out daily acts of resistance against oblivion" and "a symbolic monument to the victims of state terrorism in Argentina and Uruguay...

...taking the remnants of a memory and incorporating There is no way to close off new readings of old stothem into the present...

...In Argentina, 1996 marked the twentieth anniversary of the military coup...

...VOL XXXII...

...BY ELIZABETH JELIN Processes of democratization after mili- tary dictatorships are not easy or smooth.' With democratic mechanisms more or less in place in most Latin American countries-at least at a procedural level-the challenge now is to develop "deep" modes of democracy...

...In any time and place, it is unthinkable to find a single vision or interpretation of the past that is shared by an entire society, whatever its scope and size...

...More than 300 activists went to El Olimpo on seek to March 22, where they were greeted by a wall of policemen can have th encircling the entire block and effect of multi several anti-riot trucks-a clear sign that painting the walls of El making qu Olimpo would not be tolerated...

...See Yoseph Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989...

...The proposal prompted heated debates in the City Council...

...One layer is the confrontation about proper and improper ways to express memory...

...and Joseph R. Gillis, "Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship," in Joseph R. Gillis, Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994...

...During the commemoration event, which included music and theater, a monument made of wire and covered with photographs of the disappeared was constructed on one of the pillars of the highway...

...During such moments, the labors of memory become more inclusive and shared, invading everyday life...

...first, because their installation is always the result of paradoxical political struggles and conflicts, lying memory, and second, because their existence is a physical reminder of a Istions and past conflict, which may spark new rounds of conflict in each new historical period or generae salient...

...For example, groups may seek to build a memorial or monument as a form of public censure...

...1 0 In August 1997, human rights activists organized a "Day of Memory" at the site of El Atl6tico...

...Others may be significant at a regional or local level...

...Experiences such as having to vacate a school building because of a bomb threat or being stopped by a military patrol on a highway will have very different meanings according to the age of the person who experienced them...

...speak as if their memories were always present, just waiting for an opportu- an active transmission of memory requires fostering a nity to be expressed in words...

...Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1941, 19521...

...VOL XXXII, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998 S 0 t9 _< 25REPORT ON MEMORY torture were possible, while everyday life seemed to go on, retaining an appearance of normality...

...There are also attempts to erase whatever is left of that period, to destroy the buildings and not allow for the materialization of memory...

...They placed a plaque remembering the disappeared and engraved the names of repressors on the wall...

...Remi- door for processes of reinterpretation and resignificaniscence implies that there was a previous process of tion on the part of the young-as well as those who engraving or fixing something in memory...

...In fact, many attempts to transform sites of repression into memory sites face opposition, often leading to the physical destruction of monuments...

...Yet even at such moments, memories are multiple and at times in conflict...

...Can those who did not have the personal experience of repression also participate in the historical process of constructing collective memory...

...Engraving the names of the victims is a way to denounce the crimes that were committed against them, just as engraving the names of the torturers and 27 td 0 0 0 w _27 VOL XXXII, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998REPORT ON MEMORY other agents of state repression is a way of inculpating them for their deeds...

...Public memories and process of identification, so that it produces an interstruggles over memory express and reinforce its social generational broadening of the "we," the active subcharacter...

...Pernnels that sonal suffering-especially when suffered in one's own the recent body or in close kin connecviolence and tions-is for many the basic determinant of legitimacy and he struggle the claim to truth...