Examining testimonial production in Southern Cone Latin America (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay), Haunted Objects analyzes how the changed relationship between the subject and the material world influenced the way survivors narrate the stories of their detentions in the wake of the political violence of the 1970s and 80s. It explores descriptions of objects within testimonial narratives and uses these descriptions to inform an analysis of how the objects that survived the violence — items recovered by archeologists from former detention centers, the personal belongings of disappeared peoples, the prison craftwork created by political prisoners during their detention, and the bodies of the second generation children of the disappeared, all join together in memory projects in the post-dictatorship to offer “spectral testimony” about the past.
Megan Corbin is Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Cultures at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her primary areas of research center around the post-dictatorship periods of Southern Cone Latin America and examine the ways in which individuals, groups, and society are working to fill gaps in historical memory through literary and artistic practices.