Between Shouting and Whispering: Argentine Exiles in the face of Terror

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between exile and terror during the last Argentine military dictatorship, approaching it from two extremes. On the one hand, it presents some scenes of the primitive path of exile activism in the international public sphere, tending to name, characterize and give legal coverage to this newpolitical technology with which the military government intended not only to eliminate the “subversive enemy”, but also to discipline all citizens, reconfiguring social relations from the internalization of fear, suspicion, threat, mistrust and individualism. And, onthe other hand, approaching the primitive process of political subjectivation in exile, to focus on some of the early difficulties faced by the exiles when enunciating fear as the efficient cause of many exiles leaving the country, as well as situating exile as a linkin a repressive system that had homicidal violence and the forced disappearance of people as its hallmark.