Live to Tell

Abstract

This essay attempts a sociosemiotic approach to the stories of survivors from the Argentine clandestine centers of detention, torture and extermination (CCD), as they appear in interviews, dialogs, and statements published in actuality books. Although the testimonies contained in the books have already been given before courts of Justice and Human Rights organizations; their (re)production in publicistic supports transforms them into a production of truth oriented to affect opinion about the recent past and, therefore, collective memory. But, at the same time, these attempts to document barbarity found themselves on experience and become almost inseparable of the subjective construction of enouncers and the narrative identities (Ricoeur 1996: 147) woven in their stories. In that sense, the enunciation dispositive (Verón 2004: 173) and the presuppositions (Angenot 1989: 30) that underlie the narrative offer an entrance into the effects of terror on singular and collective identities.