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A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (Oxford World's Classics) Book
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Amazon Review
Argentina still struggles as a nation with the shame and horror of the so-called "dirty-war" of the decade following Juan Peron's death. During that horrific time, torture and kidnapping were the instruments of choice for the enforcement of political will. Feitlowitz unflinchingly examines life under sadistic military rule with detailed descriptions of the experiences of prisoners in concentration camps. The Argentinean vocabulary now includes words like desaparacido (disappeared person) and chupado (sucked up or kidnapped), vivid reminders of how commonplace kidnapping and murder became. Victims, often guilty only of nothing more than practicing psychology or journalism or being Jewish, have not been forgotten.
Though Feitlowitz touches on the linguistic effects of government terrorism in Argentina, her book's greatest strength lies in the voice it gives the victims. The author spent years talking to survivors of the terror as well as some of the people responsible for instigating it. What A Lexicon of Terror does particularly well is capture the ongoing consequences of the dirty war--victims encountering their tormentors on the streets, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo still marching to remind their government that the fates of thousands of disappeared are still not known, a government held hostage by the fear of army uprisings should any attempt to bring culprits to justice be made. Argentina is the subject of this particular Lexicon, but surely the citizens of other nations such as Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador might see their own experiences mirrored here.
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Product Description
In A Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz fully exposes the nightmare of sadism, paranoia, and deception the military dictatorship unleashed on the Argentine people during the Dirty War, a nightmare that would claim over 30,000 civilians from 1976 to 1983. Feitlowitz explores the perversion of language under state terrorism, both as it's used to conceal and confuse and to domesticate torture and murder. Based on six years of research and moving interviews with peasants, intellectuals, activists, and bystanders, A Lexicon of Terror examines the full impact of this catastrophic period from its inception to the present, in which former torturers, having been pardoned and released from prison, live side by side with those they tortured. Passionately written and impossible to put down, A Lexicon of Terror shows us both the horror of the war and the heroism of those who resisted and survived.
- 0195134168
- 9780195134162
- Marguerite Feitlowitz
- 25 November 1999
- OUP USA
- Paperback (Book)
- 320
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