The transmission of traumatic memories across generations in Uruguay: The experiences of families of the disappeared, political prisoners, and exiles after the era of state repression (1973--1984)

My dissertation analyzes the private modes of transmission of enduring traumatic memories of three emblematic experiences after state repression via a case study of Uruguayan families of the disappeared, the political prisoners, and the exiled, after the military dictatorship (1973--1985). Through qualitative interviews and interpretive and comparative analysis, I address how parents or caregivers in these families passed on their experiences to their children in the intimacy of the domestic sphere, in the context of the most extreme of transitional human rights policies of silencing and denial of human rights abuses after state terror (1985--2000). I found two main private modes of transmissions, implicit embodied expressive practices (or what I call ways of being) and cognitive pedagogies for horror (what I call ways of knowing) embedded in Uruguay's public culture and politics of denial and silence about the traumatic past, what has come to be known as "policies of oblivion.";In this context of paradoxical resurgence of remembering against policies of forgetting, and in the midst of a public silence of decades, I investigate how these memories were sustained and transmitted in the private intimate sphere of families across generations. My study contributes to the growing socio-cultural field of collective memory and trauma research with an intersubjective socio-cultural and social-psychological approach.