As a PhD recipient from the University of  Houston's Hispanic Studies Dept. (2023) I am eager to offer a seminar that will focus on theory and criticism in comparative literature and will feature new ideas and perspectives concerning the following  pivotal topic: the points of connection and discontinuity across two cohorts of writers, Chilean and Argentine, offering postmemory of childhood cultures vis-a-vis their guardians' dictatorial struggles. The panel will look to further reflect and draw on comparisons between Argentine autofictionists and the Chilean second-wave, postdictatorial writers whom Ana Ros refers to as “Pinochet's children”. It is important to point out that this brand of Chilean literature features many parents who survived and were thus able to share painful memories with their children. Thus, there is little need for these writers, who did not undergo “often traumatic experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right,” (Hirsch), to recreate the past—because they remember, and in some cases even came of age during Augusto Pinochet’s rule. Unlike the Argentine autofictionists, these writers could have a dialogue with their still-alive parents, so the Argentine brand of autofiction is a non-starter in this context. 

This seminar's intent is to examine points of connection and divergence––such as the ubiquitous theme of abandonment––across these two cohorts of writers---and the ways in which children of the Pinochet dictatorship used fiction to impart a very different, but also very dark experience of acquiescence to state repression.    

Relevant  texts include Camanchaca (2013) by Diego Zúñiga, Space Invaders (2013) by Nona Fernández, Sistema nervioso (2018) by Nina Meruane, and Formas de volver a casa (2021) by Alejandro Zambra. Argentine texts include Los Topos (2008) by Félix Bruzzone, Diario de una princesa montonera: 110% verdad (2012) by Mariana Eva Perez; Una muchacha muy bella (2013, A Beautiful Young Woman translated by Samuel Rutter, 2017) by Julián López, Pequeños combatientes (2013) by Raquel Robles, and Aparecida (2015) by Marta Dillon.

This seminar will  employ a distinct methodological approach, exploring two key questions about the role that literature can play as a window into the infant lives of the persecuted: 

1) To what extent is historical memory in the postdictatorial Argentine context maintained by the literary genre of autobiographical fiction, or, “autofiction,” and how does that genre relate qualitatively to Chilean memoirist chronicling? 

2) What is the aesthetic point of view of Argentine autofiction when compared with its second-generation Chilean counterparts?

The seminar intends to demonstrate how this postmemory  genre, emerging from specific historical conditions, has found a means to transform the pain of personal and collective trauma into powerful literary contributions with a vast reach.