Post-memory and politics of affections: the Marcha del Silêncio as cultural politics

Abstract

The present historic reflection refers to a political and cultural phenomenon of social mobilization that allows activating two important analytical notions for the current debate in studies on memory and culture: the notion of post-memory and the politics of affections. In what sense does the Marcha del Silencio allow it to be understood as a political and social phenomenon of the post-memory of generations of Uruguayans involved in the events of the civic-military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s in the country? It is considered that this mobilization is a contemporary example of a cultural production based on a policy of affections, strategy and identification that makes use of “feeling affected”, “implicated”, of what allows to unify, articulate and build a mobilization presented as a cultural event, and which allows to transcend the political limits that gave rise to it.