hist 360 lexicon essay the realest deal

7/31/2019 Hist 360 Lexicon Essay the Realest Deal

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Matthew May

260353446HIST 360 The History of Latin American Since 1825

Prof. Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert

TA: Geoffrey Wallace26 March, 2012Dehumanizing Violence:

The Essentialization of the Body During Argentina's Dirty War

The atrocities carried out, directed, and endorsed by the military junta in Argentina during the

Dirty War (1976 to 1983) used dehumanization as both a justification for and mechanism of the

disappearances, detentions, torture, and murders that the accused 'subversives' experienced, while the

public 'knew, but...didn't know'.1This process was an essentialization creating one's essential

element from their perceived 'character'. The characterization of an individual is the recognition of their

physical, corporal being in collaboration with their mind and the ideologies that make it up. To classify

one as a 'subversive', then, is to claim that one holds an ideology that is perceived to be in direct

conflict with what is deemed a true and necessary ideology. Logical coherence would then inspire one

to act in accordance with their ideology, unless physically prevented from doing so. Thus, one who is

thought to hold subversive beliefs, will (or, at least, contains the potential to) use their body in

accordance with their beliefs making them both physically and ideologically subversive. Given a

belief in their intrinsic connection, one need only be thought of as ideologically subversive to be

considered essentially a 'subversive' because the body naturally follows. Under this premise that the

two aspects of the self are intrinsically attached both the physical and psychological must be

acknowledged and acted upon in order to apply punishment to this subversion. However, physical

harm is more controversial because of its physicality whereas for psychological pain to be known and

understood, it must (often) be described in words (leaving room for a more subjective viewing),

physical pain need only be seen to be understood. Psychological harm can effectively be done in

1 Marguerite Feitlowitz,A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2011), 124.


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conjunction with the application of physical harm through torture. In order to justify doing harm to the

physical body (as punishment for holding subversive ideologies), the corporal element must be

removed from or overwhelmed by the attribution of the nonphysical elements to the body of the

accused. This is done by claiming that the individual has become subsumed by their ideology, and thus

not fully human. It is the utilization (and thus exploitation) of what Foucault calls the political

technology of the body, whereby the body becomes conceived not as property, but as a strategy.2

'Disappearance', captivity, torture, and murder are thus justified as acts not upon the skin, but

movements through The Process.

In Argentina during the Dirty War, the military junta was able to carry out these mass

disappearances largely in public. To do this, the junta achieved several things: a political platform

inextricably tied to national identity; a criteria of inclusion and exclusion; criminalization and

dehumanization of those excluded; and finally the enforcement of such a criteria.

The political platform established was the Process for National Reorganization, which explicitly

mentioned the 'eradicat[ion of] subversion' as a central component along with 'economic

development'. The Process was to be realized by the nation acting upon its 'sacred responsibilities'.3

The implication was clear: the Process could only be realized through full bodily cooperation, and thus

full ideological cooperation. General Jorge Rafael Videla makes this clear when he says that 'a

terrorist is not only someone who plants bombs, but a person whose ideas are country to our Western,

Christian civilization.' The Process was Argentina as much as it was Argentine.

With the lines drawn around what constituted the Process (and thus Argentina), the divide

became clear as to who was included as a citizen. Kinship was defined by this designation that only

'authentic Argentine's' could be part of the national family.4This sentiment is made explicit when

2 Michel Foucault,Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books,

1995), 26.3 Feitlowitz,Lexicon of Terror, 25.

4 Feitlowitz,Lexicon of Terror, 78.


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Videla explained the junta's belief that '[t]he repression is directed against a minority [they] do not

consider Argentine. Because the Process is Argentine, those who are deemed subversive are not.

Without a claim to citizenship, the junta was immediately able to justify extra(and il)-legal methods of

eradication. Even further, one sadistic torturer...known in the camps as El Cura, 'The Priest' removed

subversive's claim not only to national citizenship, but additionally removed them from the whole

Judeo-Christian 'family of man.'5 With no legal or spiritual claim to humanity, subversives were truly

dehumanized. And further, with no claim to a body or a space, their very existence was a subversion.

Videla himself described the Process as being 'not subject to a time frame, but rather to the realization

of its objectives.'6 This removes the physical entirely from the body of the subversive and the entire

mechanism of the Process. That the junta disappeared subversives for the purpose of torture and murder

(that they were detained was really only a means of holding one's body before and between acts of

torture and murder, in which waiting itself also became a form of psychological torture), is then very

telling.

When considering how the junta was able to commit such atrocities with a public that was at

least partially aware of the disappearances meant, it must be understood that the junta first justified it to

themselves. They did this through the religious-morality of what Osiel considers the Neomedieval

Theology of the Catholic Church in Argentina during the Dirty War. Positive law was considered to be

without necessity when it was inconsistent with the higher morality of God's law.7 As well, [f]or

certain members of the Church, 'human rights' was the devil's own play word, a loft-sounding label for

moral sin. It was, according to Idelfonso Maria Sansierra, the Archbishop of San Juan, an atheist

mentality.8 Captain Adolfo Scilingo, who carried out many crimes of the junta, verbalized this culture

of religious justification. He explains that he went to confession after the act of throwing 'subversives'


6 Feitlowitz,Lexicon of Terror, 37.7 Mark J. Osiel, Constructing Subversion in Argentina's Dirty War,Representations 75 (2001): 130.



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off a plane into the ocean to die. He was absolved by the priest, who told him it was [i]t was a

Christian form of death.9 He was uncomfortable with the act, in part, not because it was morally

wrong, but because he was concerned 'that civilians wouldn't understand.' Even after being absolved

(even praised) by 'the priest who baptized [his] youngest child,' Scilingo was uneasy.10 However,

these concerns were only internal (until after the Dirty War), as the religious justification embodied

something outside the self: a national Process.

The public justification for the disappearances of the continually dehumanized 'subversive'

element was the uncomfortable psychological contradiction of junta's denial with the well-known

actual disappearing of individuals. This denial was astounding in its ability to sound reasonable, while

always flying in the face of reason and facts. Videla simultaneously acknowledged that 'there are

missing persons in Argentina,' while also saying that this was not a problem Argentinians need worry

about (let alone, the rest of the world). He claimed that many of those missing chose to do so

themselves, so as to hide from the state to then subvert it, while others ended up 'appearing before the

microphones on television in some European country, speaking ill of Argentina.' This was a violation

of the national project, and his claims needed only to seem plausible to be effective. Even more

brilliantly, Videla also acknowledged that 'some persons might have disappeared owing to exesses

committed by the repression, but that steps were being taken to ensure that it not be repeated.11

Public opinion was deemed irrelevant, the desaparecidos just the products of subversion.

While continually referring to the enemy as 'subversives', the actual persons who were

disappeared and tortured were in a sense the victims of 'randomization', which had a devastating effect

on the daily calculations of citizens, most of whom will be risk-averse. This is due most essentially to

the decentralized application of a centralized mission of subversive eradication. Osiel highlights the

9 Feitlowitz,Lexicon of Terror, 229.10 Feitlowitz,Lexicon of Terror, 232.



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Bibliography

Feitlowitz, Marguerite.A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2011.

Foucault, Michel.Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.Translated by Alan Sheridan. New

York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Osiel, Mark J. Constructing Subversion in Argentina's Dirty War.Representations 75 (2001): 119-

158.

hist 360 lexicon essay the realest deal

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