The Memory of the Dictatorship in Two Latin American Romances: Madness and Glory

This article discusses the relationship between the constitution of memory and the possible meanings evoked by the stories and memories of the narrators-characters in the novels Bebados e sonambulos (1996) by Bernardo Carvalho and Duas vezes junho (2005) by Martin Kohan. In this analysis, the madness and the false glory, respectively, of military government contexts in Brazil and Argentina are presented as contrasting themes and, at the same time, converging with respect to the effects resulting from the aesthetic configuration of memory in both narratives. In this way, the ideas of Henry Bergson (1999) and Beatriz Sarlo (2005) about memory will be used, among others; by Maria Jose Rezende (2001) and Luis Alberto Romero (2012) on the historiographical and philosophical reflection of the contexts of military dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina, in order to observe how the aesthetics of memory occurs in the novels proposed for analysis.