Digital Archives and Intergenerational Reckoning with Chile’s Traumatic Past In Mis documentos (2014) and Poeta chileno (2020) by Alejandro Zambra

Abstract

The children who grew up during the Pinochet regime have turned to literature, film, and digital media to reckon with the material and immaterial consequences of state-sponsored terror. To date, there is a dearth of critical attention on how digital archiving influences testimonial literature in the Southern Cone. Alejandro Zambra has received international acclaim for his insightful narratives that explore intergenerational memory struggles and allegories of post-dictatorship isolation. This article examines his more recent works as they turn to the computer, the Internet, digital archives, and use them as a generational means to communicate trauma. Together, Zambra and the reader can contemplate the possibilities and limitations that digital archives have and will have for Chile’s memory struggles.