Toying with History in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the use of Playmobil figures in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios (2003), a pioneering example of a new trend of post-dictatorship cultural remembrance that takes a desacralized and anti-monumental approach to the past. By drawing parallels between Los rubios and playful memories of other traumatic events—notably the Holocaust—the author suggests that these works redirect our gaze from the experience of the adult survivors towards that of their heirs, that they connect state violence to the violence inherent in everyday objects of childhood, and that they revitalize the generational transmission of history by offering profane images of “sacred” events—that is, events that resist representation. At the same time, however, these works hint at the ontological impossibility of completely and comprehensively understanding and overcoming trauma.