Last update:
9 February 2010
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What We RememberThe construction of memory in military discourse
2008. x, 246 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 0617 6 / EUR 105.00 / USD 158.00
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
This interdisciplinary monograph explores the discursive manifestations of the conflict over how to remember and interpret the actions of the military during the last dictatorship in Uruguay (1973-1985). Through the exploration of the discursive ways in which this powerful group represents past events and participants, we can trace the ideological struggle over how to reconstruct a traumatic past. By looking at memory as a social and discursive practice, the analysis identifies particular semiotic practices and linguistic patterns deployed in the construction of memory. The discursive description of what is remembered, how it is remembered, and who remembers serves to explain how the institution’s construction of the past is transformed and maintained to respond to outside criticism and create an institutional identity as a lawful state apparatus. This book should interest discourse analysts, historians, sociologists and researchers in the field of transitional justice.
Table of contents
“This book by Dr. Mariana Achugar is a unique contribution to historical and ideological discourse studies. First of all because military discourse is hardly ever analyzed in our field, despite the fact that the military not only fight and kill, but also talk, especially when they want to obfuscate or legitimate their abuses. Secondly, her work is important because of the study of the triple interface between discourse, social cognition (memory and forgetting) and politics of the nation state. Thirdly, Dr. Achugar is relevant for discourse studies more generally because of her systematic analysis of argumentation strategies, actor representation and other properties of text and talk. And finally, and perhaps most dramatically, this book offers a linguistic portrait of some of the main actors of the darkest episodes of recent Latin American history: the military dictatorships of the 20th century.”
Teun Van Dijk, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
“Some memories fade away; other stick around, haunting future generations. What we Remember addresses the struggles over amnesty, responsibility and reconciliation in relation to Uruguayan military discourse. Achugar's readings provide an engaging account of these struggles, skillfully demonstrating in the process how CDA and SFL analysis inform one another. Writing as the daughter of exiled Uruguayan leftists, she provides an illuminating, and potentially exorcising exploration of a dictatorship whose legacy has far from gone away.”
“This book is thought-provoking for people interested in the study of memory recollection, and/or the study of discursive practices. Both issues are thoroughly covered - and connected - in the book. This is the key positive aspect of this book, where we get some insight into the process of memory construction, and its discursive connection with the context in which discursive practices are produced and the common knowledge shared by social actors involved in them. [...] The book's organisation is worth praising. The diachronic study that is presented in the analysis is not only useful in order to understand recent Uruguayan history - and its discursive representation - but also to get a grasp of discursive change throughout time . [...] This book is not only an interesting reading because of what it offers and the knowledge we get from it, but also because of the new lines of research it opens up. The connection between discourse and memory, the importance of the context in which they are produced, and the people to whom those recollections about the past are addressed offers the possibility of creating a taxonomy of types of memory which can be classified by taking the variables considered in the analysis in this book, i.e. genre, situational context and addressees.”
Subject classification |
Communication Studies