How do we narrate horror? How do we construct a memory of horror? The first question unfolds into the second when we go from dictatorship to postdictatorship, as we may see in the narratives of Argentine writer Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill. Through the analysis of two of the author's short stories, "Muchacha punk" (1979) and "La larga risa de todos estos años" (1983), this article examines the way in which his narratives operate a shift in relation to the notion of testimony, in order to narrate the horrors of dictatorship, as well as in relation to the construction of memory, as they point out its inevitably faulty character. With these shifts Fogwill displays the nation's fissures and deconstructs its myths.
dictatorship; postdictatorship; memory; nation; Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill