The aim of the present text is to reflect about suffering when associated to violence, through the analysis of the social construction of significant figures that inhabit the discourse on violence, in particular the victim and the witness, around whom the social recognition of suffering and the legitimacy of forms of reparation of the violence suffered are searched. In order to think about these figures, the references are the experiences of torture, death and disappearance during the civil-military Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985), considering the forms in which Brazilian society deals with the memory of this historical experience through the testimony of its protagonists (written texts, hearings, interviews), a memory always mediated by the ways in which the social world is inhabited in the present time.
suffering; victim; violence; witness