Cesar Seveso

Examining the struggles of workers and students against authoritarian governments, this dissertation claims that the legitimization and social tolerance of political violence are the most significant facets of contemporary Argentine history. Drawing on previously untapped sources, it shows that violence became constitutive of political identities and that its exercise was a crucial ritual of intervention in the public sphere. The first in-depth historical analysis of the cultural and gendered aspects of political violence in Argentina, this study involves much more than research into the past. It is a work about memory struggles that deepens our understanding of the ways in which individuals and groups have dealt—and deal today—with a recent, still painful history.