Recalling Violence: Gender and Memory Work in Contemporary Post-conflict Peru

Abstract

Drawing on the memory battles in contemporary Peru, Jelke Boesten explores victimhood, agency and representation across lines of class, race and gender. In particular, she looks at how gendered aspects of violence are recalled in artistic representations of the past, and if and how such representations may provide any form of redress, reparation or consolation for victim-survivors of war. Such a gendered reading of commemorative practices and symbolic reparations highlights what is not said, what is still hidden and whose trauma is at stake—and whose is not.