De la Cultura del Miedo a la Memoria Social: Una Lectura del Trabajo de Elizabeth Lira

Abstract

Despite the wide recognition of Elizabeth Lira's research career, a discussion of the contributions and debates that her work has inspired has yet to emerge. Likewise, no specialized intellectual developments exist which make it possible to reuse, develop, and circulate her work and its implications critically. In this article the author aims to contribute to this still pending discussion and explore some aspects of Elizabeth Lira's work from the point of view of memory studies, focusing on political violence and the recent past. The author presents a historical contextualization of Lira's intellectual trajectory within the framework of the Southern Cone military dictatorships, identifying thematic axes that organize her work: the analysis of the effects of dictatorships, long-term analyses of practices and institutions, and analyses of political memory. Finally, the author outlines some dilemmas that arise from the discussion, such as the tension between memory and representation and the relation between memory and democracy.