From the dictatorial city to silence resistance: writings of Elvira Hernández and Liliana Lukin

Abstract

The article explores two texts: the unpublished book Pena corporal by Chilean poet Elvira Hernández, written between 1983 and 1987, and Descomposición (1986) by Argentinian Liliana Lukin, set between 1980 and 1982. Both works attempt to investigate how it is (was) possible to represent the extreme violence that was institutionalized by past dictatorships. The reading focus is set, preferably, on the symbolic constructions
of the city and silence as discursive strategies far constructing meaning, in both resistance and imposition.