Dictatorships in the Hispanic World

Book excerpt: This book broaches a comparative and interdisciplinary approach in its exploration of the phenomenon of the dictatorship in the Hispanic World in the twentieth century. Some of the themes explored through a transatlantic perspective include testimonial accounts of violence and resistance in prisons; hunger and repression; exile, silence and intertextuality; bildungsroman and the modification of gender roles; and the role of trauma and memory within the genres of the novel, autobiography, testimonial literature, the essay, documentaries, puppet theater, poetry, and visual art. By looking at the similarities and differences of dictatorships represented in the diverse landscapes of Latin America and Spain, the authors hope to provide a more panoramic view of the dictatorship that moves beyond historiographical accounts of oppression and engages actively in a more broad dialectics of resistance and a politics of memory.