Abstract

The policies of oblivion and amnesty initiated during the Argentinean military dictatorship (1976-1983) and perpetuated by successive democratic governments until 2003, that have much in common with the policies implemented in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975) and the Transition, expunged exiles victims of state terrorism from the collective memory of their people. These same exiles, the families of the victims and various Argentinean intellectuals, fought against such a regime of silence and oblivion. Among them, Argentinean playwright Roberto Cossa presented the issue of exile in Gris de ausencia (1981), Ya nadie recuerda a Frederic Chopin (1982), Lejos de aquí (1993) and Definitivamente, adiós (2003), allowing for a comparison between the Argentinean exile and that of the Spanish Republicans. By connecting the theoretical frameworks of memory and exile, the goal of this thesis is to show that in the same way as in just such a historical context many Argentinean and Spanish exiles were not able to recover their space in their societies because they were excluded from the collective memory (Halbwachs), in the afore-mentioned plays this incapacity is revealed by the characters through the impossibility of desexilio (Benedetti) determined by destiempo (Guillén) and the imperative of loyalty (Shklar/Faber). While these plays try to include the exiles in the collective memory by encouraging debate, paradoxically they present a somewhat forlorn vision in which, in the end, oblivion wins out —a reflection of a society that, in great measure, forgot their past.