Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen

According to Dominick LaCapra's critique, the Holocause documentary Shoah (1985) would operate in terms of a re-traumatising strategy, appearing obsessed with prompting survivors and other witnesses to act out traumatic symptoms in front of the camera. Alternativelty, LaCapra argues for a favou...

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Main Author: Traverso, Antonio
Other Authors: Dawn Bennett
Format: Book Chapter
Published: Black Swan Press 2009
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43583
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author Traverso, Antonio
author2 Dawn Bennett
author_facet Dawn Bennett
Traverso, Antonio
author_sort Traverso, Antonio
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description According to Dominick LaCapra's critique, the Holocause documentary Shoah (1985) would operate in terms of a re-traumatising strategy, appearing obsessed with prompting survivors and other witnesses to act out traumatic symptoms in front of the camera. Alternativelty, LaCapra argues for a favouring of texts that work through trauma and seek to release survivors and audiences from the cycles of trauma transmission. A recent documentary that explores the theme of the military dictatorship that shook Chile betweek 1973 and 1990, Reinalda del Carmen, mi mama y yo (2006) is proposed in this essay as an example of the kind of text favoured by LaCapra. In order to illuminate its analysis of this Chilean documentary of enmeshed personal and public memory this essay draws on the distinction between acting out and working through textual approaches to historical trauma derived from LaCapra's theorisation of this topic. The essay argues that, despite inheriting much of the approach established by Shoah, through its simultaneous articulation of acting-out and working-through strategies Reinalda del Carmen, mi mama y yo moves beyond the limitations identified by LaCapra in Shoah, thus actively contributing to the process of cultural release of the cycle of historical trauma in Chile.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-435832022-12-09T07:12:34Z Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen Traverso, Antonio Dawn Bennett Jaya Earnest Miyume Tanji According to Dominick LaCapra's critique, the Holocause documentary Shoah (1985) would operate in terms of a re-traumatising strategy, appearing obsessed with prompting survivors and other witnesses to act out traumatic symptoms in front of the camera. Alternativelty, LaCapra argues for a favouring of texts that work through trauma and seek to release survivors and audiences from the cycles of trauma transmission. A recent documentary that explores the theme of the military dictatorship that shook Chile betweek 1973 and 1990, Reinalda del Carmen, mi mama y yo (2006) is proposed in this essay as an example of the kind of text favoured by LaCapra. In order to illuminate its analysis of this Chilean documentary of enmeshed personal and public memory this essay draws on the distinction between acting out and working through textual approaches to historical trauma derived from LaCapra's theorisation of this topic. The essay argues that, despite inheriting much of the approach established by Shoah, through its simultaneous articulation of acting-out and working-through strategies Reinalda del Carmen, mi mama y yo moves beyond the limitations identified by LaCapra in Shoah, thus actively contributing to the process of cultural release of the cycle of historical trauma in Chile. 2009 Book Chapter http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43583 Black Swan Press restricted
spellingShingle Traverso, Antonio
Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title_full Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title_fullStr Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title_full_unstemmed Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title_short Working through trauma in post-dictatorial Chilean documentary: Lorena Giachino's Reinalda del Carmen
title_sort working through trauma in post-dictatorial chilean documentary: lorena giachino's reinalda del carmen
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43583