Copyright

Inés Dussel

Published On

2024-04-22

Page Range

pp. 167–190

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

7. Growing up in Cold War Argentina

Working through the (An)archives of Childhood Memories

Chapter of: (An)Archive: Childhood, Memory, and the Cold War(pp. 167–190)
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.

Contributors

Inés Dussel

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3983-3985

Inés Dussel grew up in Cold War Argentina and her early experiences with political involvement and military and paramilitary repression marked her life. She was active in human rights struggles during the post dictatorship, and co-produced teaching materials and teacher education courses that took memory politics as a central public and pedagogical issue. She moved up and down the American continent quite a few times. She currently works at the Department of Educational Research at CINVESTAV, Mexico City, where she has some wonderful colleagues and students. She thinks of herself as a public intellectual interested in the pasts and futures of schooling and cultures, which she sees as institutions or forces for the commons. The history of education has been a persistent focus of her work, and from 2022 to 2025 she is the president of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE).