The illuminated zone:

Carmen Perilli’s improlijas memorias (2021) and the interventions of critics

Abstract

 With the reopening of cases for crimes against humanity in Argentina in 2003 and the effective action of justice, testimonial literature allows the configuration of a new agenda of issues. After the sentences, the authors of the genre do not have the urgency or the mandate to speak on behalf of the victims and their families, but rather they can organize a metaphorical story with the desire to illuminate an area of the past that had not been narrated until then (Nofal 2022). This is the case of Improlijas Memorias by Carmen Perilli (2021), who after hearing the life sentence of the torturers who disappeared her husband in 1977, in her testimony illuminates her encounter with literary research as the instance that allows her to construct for herself a position that is not that of the “victim’s woman,” but rather that of the “intellectual woman.” Coincidentally, it will be that illuminated area, which earns her the recognition of the National University of Tucumán as Professor Emeritus in 2024; and the recognition of literary criticism with a gender perspective that exhumes the names and genealogies of the women who make up the field of study (Gerbaudo 2016, 2023, 2024; Maradei y Vázquez 2024; Angilleta 2020).