Testimonial Diffractions: Cultural and Legal Responses to Gender-Based Violence in Argentina (Illuminations)

Ana Forcinito explores how testimonial voices have played a pivotal role in the fight for justice, memory, and gender rights. Through the concept of diffraction, she examines how these voices move through and reshape barriers to construct sonic spaces that connect bodies and create spaces for listening. While Argentina is sometimes regarded as a global leader in human rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and feminist movements, legal and judicial responses to gender-based violence following the last military dictatorship (1976–1983) were slow to materialize. This book explores these delayed advancements while highlighting the role of testimonial voices in shaping them. Testimonial expressions outside the legal scenario denounce violence and explore the edges of memory and the difficulties of narrating violent events and their aftermaths while exposing how gender-based violence is entangled with other expressions of violence.

Ana Forcinito is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of four books, including Intermittences: Memory, Justice, and the Poetics of the Visible, and the executive editor of Hispanic Issues.