ERIC Number: EJ1178715
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Mar
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0018-2133
EISSN: N/A
The Discourse of Silence as Testimony in Jenn Díaz's "Es Un Decir"
Riordan-Goncalves, Julia
Hispania, v101 n1 p125-135 Mar 2018
The explosion of interest in the recovery of historical memory in Spain seeks to address many decades of silence and forgetting during the years of the Franco dictatorship and afterwards. Working with trauma theory, Michel Foucault's understanding of silence as discourse, as well as queer theory's exploration of silence as strategy and power, this article examines the multiple roles of silence in Jenn Díaz's "Es un decir" (2014), a novel that portrays the effects of political violence on three generations of women living in postwar Spain. With closer examination of the dynamic between enunciated and silenced discourses in the novel, this study aims to understand how silence communicates and testifies to traumatic pain and memory, strength, and resistance. This analysis shows that silence in the face of trauma does not indicate weakness, nor does it equal forgetting. Rather, it is a part of discourse that expresses suffering, conveys strength, and safeguards memory.
Descriptors: Spanish, History, Memory, Trauma, Resilience (Psychology), Foreign Countries, Novels, Violence, Political Power, Authoritarianism, Discourse Analysis, Theories, Females, War
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc. 900 Ladd Road, Walled Lake, MI 48390. Tel: 248-960-2180; Fax: 248-960-9570; e-mail: AATSPoffice@aatsp.org; Web site: http://www.aatsp.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Spain
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A