Lest We Forget: The Legacies of El Proceso, 1976-1983

"State Penetration, Loss of Rights, and De-subjectivization: Continuities Between the Authoritarian and the Neo liberal States"

Judith Filc

Judith Filc looks at the continuities between the 1976-1983 dictatorship and the 1990s neo liberal state in Argentina in terms of the relationship between sociopolitical transformations and the emergence of new subjetivities. In both cases we could posit a relationship between the re-mapping of public and private spaces, the construction of the national/political subject, and the modes of social control. These phenomena all contribute to the production of various forms of disenfranchisement that affect the construction of what Piera Aulagnier calls the “history of identifications,” thus hindering the constitution of subjectivity. She refers to such forms of disaffiliation as “forms of foreignness,” thus establishing a connection between exile, disappearance, and the new forms of exclusion under neo liberalism.

Prof. Filc earned her PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. She taught at the Instituto del Conurbano, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento for seven years, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Dept of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU. Judith Filc is the author of "Entre el parentesco y la politica. Familia y dictadura, 1976-1983", and editor of "Territorios, Itinerarios, Fronteras. La cuestion cultural urbana en el Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, 1990-2000". She has published two books of poetry, "Transducciones" and "El otro lado".

"Argentina, Operation Condor, and the Internationalization of State Terror"

J. Patrice McSherry

Operation Condor was a secret Latin American military network created in the 1970s that allowed associated armed and intelligence forces to share intelligence on political opponents--and seize, torture, and execute them secretly and without due process. Condor represented a key strategic concept of Cold War national security doctrine: the concept of hemispheric defense defined by ideological frontiers. Condor was a clandestine component of the larger inter-American system of countersubversive coordination led by the United States. This presentation examines particularly the role of Argentina within Operation Condor.

A Fulbright scholar in Argentina (1992), J. Patrice McSherry is Associate Professor of Political Science at Long Island University/Brooklyn. She is author of "Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997) and is currently writing a book on Operation Condor. Prof. McSherry is Associate Editor/Latin America for Journal of Third World Studies and founding chair of the Latin America and Caribbean Studies Program at LIU. Regarded as one of the foremost scholars on Operation Condor, she has been interviewed by numerous foreign and domestic journalists (including The New York Times; Newsweek; Jornal do Brasil, Posdata (Uruguay), Televisión Cataluña; and Dutch Public Television) and invited to lecture in Latin America and in the United States on Condor. Prof. McSherry's articles on the military in Latin America have appeared in numerous scholarly journals.

"Newcomers and Ex-presidents Running for Office in Argentina and Latin America"

Javier Corrales

The presidential elections of many Latin American countries in the past several years have featured an unusual mix of candidates: former presidents are returning from the past to run for president, often against complete political neophytes. The Argentine presidential election of 2003 is a good example. What does this odd electoral mix of newcomers and old-timers mean for Argentina and Latin America?

Javier Corrales obtained his Ph.D. in political science in 1996 from
Harvard University, where he specialized in comparative and
international politics of Latin America. He currently teaches political
science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His areas of
interest include the politics of economic policy reform in developing
countries. He is the author of "Presidents Without Parties: the
Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s"
(Penn State Press 2002). He has taught and conducted field research in
Latin America, and his research has been published in several book
chapters and academic journals such as Comparative Politics, World
Development, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies
Quarterly, World Policy Journal and Studies in Comparative International
Studies. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars in Washington, DC., and a consultant for the World Bank and the United Nations.

When: Friday, April 11 at 4:30 P.M.
Where: Room 9205
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
(Between 34th and 35th St.)

To reserve please send e-mail to bildner@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096.