7. Growing up in Cold War Argentina

Abstract

This chapter sets out to present some exercises on childhood memories from Cold War Argentina. Combining written texts with drawings and pictures, it seeks to navigate the tensions between an ‘I’ of personal memories and a ‘we’ emerging in the collective-biography workshops. It invites a journey through an (an)archive of childhood memories produced in the interstitial space between memory and forgetting, not looking for healing but trying to ‘excavate a wound’. What does one remember from one’s childhood? Where or when does a childhood start and end? Do traumatic events cast their ominous shadows on every recollection of the past? Do these memories speak about the past or about the present in which they emerge? Memory seems to be a tricky lane, which morphs as one moves. The text aims to work through these memory exercises and materials to discuss how we connect with children’s memories and experiences.