transnational history Archives

Review of Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil by Rebecca J. Atencio (2014)

On November 18, 2011, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff launched the National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade or, CNV). The CNV’s mandate included the investigation of torture, disappearances, executions, and other human rights abuses committed between 1946 and 1988. The commission’s period of inquiry covered twenty-one years of military rule, from 1964 to 1985.[1] The National Truth Commission began more than two decades after the dictatorship’s end, and this delay makes Brazil one of the last countries in Latin America to undertake a state-sponsored investigation of human rights violations committed during the Cold War.

Members of the National Truth Commission delivers its final report to President Dilma Rousseff in 2014 — *The National Truth Commission delivers its final report to President Dilma Rousseff in 2014.*
*Source: Isaac Amorim*

Brazil, the third country in Latin America to undergo a democratic transition, has lagged behind many of its neighbors in the fight for truth and accountability. This occurred, in part, because of the gradual nature of the transfer of power. The military regime had achieved a relatively successful socioeconomic record and maintained a significant level of societal support. As a result, the armed forces exercised a high degree of control over democratization and successfully negotiated the conditions of this transition.[2]

Among the most substantial concessions won by the military was the 1979 Amnesty Law, which granted pardons for political or related crimes perpetrated between 1961 and 1979. Interpreted broadly since its passage, the 1979 amnesty has guaranteed impunity for state agents who committed human rights abuses. In Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil, Rebecca J. Atencio, a professor of Brazilian literary and cultural studies, takes 1979 as democratization’s starting point and traces Brazil’s transitional justice process within a regional context.

The first book to analyze institutional and cultural responses in the aftermath of state terrorism in Brazil, Memory’s Turn (2014) seeks to understand the dynamic relationship between transitional justice mechanisms and exceptional cultural works (literature, television, film, and theater). Atencio’s innovative approach attempts to bridge two distinct fields: memory studies and transitional justice studies. Memory’s Turn asks readers to consider whether activity in one realm affects outcomes in the other. Atencio does not argue there is a causal relationship between artistic-cultural production and institutional mechanisms, but she does contend that interplay between the two realms can “magnify and prolong the impact of both and thereby lay the foundation for further institutional steps.”[3]

Atencio primarily concerns her study with the public reception and framing of cultural works. This emphasis leads her to rely on mass media, scholarly criticism, and published interviews by artistic producers (memoirists, actors, network producers, screenwriters) as well as the cultural works themselves. Although Atencio consulted scholars, creators, and activists during her research, she does not include personal interviews in her analysis. The reliance on published statements reflects her desire to understand how cultural producers framed their works and agendas in public debates.

In order to study the interaction between cultural production and transitional justice, Atencio first selected key institutional measures and then identified “linked” works. She considers cultural and institutional acts linked when they launch around the same time, and the general public begins to associate the two events with one another. This creates what Atencio defines as an “imaginary linkage.” Once the public has paired cultural and institutional mechanisms, individuals or groups can leverage the connection in order to promote their agenda. Atencio refers to this multi-part process as a “cycle of cultural memory.”[4]

Over four chapters, Memory’s Turn traces four cycles of cultural memory that took place between the 1970s and early 2010s. Not all works that emerge concurrently with an institutional mechanism become paired, so Atencio focuses her analysis on a few exemplary artistic-cultural productions that achieved this imaginary linkage. Chapter one analyzes how Brazil’s Amnesty Law became associated with two memoirs published by former militants: O que é isso, companheiro by Fernando Gabeira and Os carbonários by Alfredo Sirkis. The following chapter explores the television mini-series Anos rebeldes, partially inspired by Sirkis’s memoir. The show coincided with the impeachment process initiated against Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil’s first-democratically elected president following the dictatorship, and became tied to popular student protests. In chapter three, she examines Fernando Bonassi’s novel Prova contrária in conjunction with the commission formed to award reparations to the families of those disappeared under the military regime. The final chapter investigates the connection between the play Lembrar é resistir and the establishment of Brazil’s first official site of memory at a former torture center in São Paulo.

By evaluating individual cycles of cultural memory, Memory’s Turn moves chronologically from the dictatorship’s end to the present day. Atencio brings these case studies together in her concluding chapter, which analyzes the longer arc of transitional justice and collective memory processes in Brazil within a global context. Ultimately, Atencio concludes that the linkage between cultural works and institutional mechanisms can foster wider public engagement and new efforts to reckon with the past.[5] As a result, cultural producers, along with human rights groups and activists, have led the turn to memory in Brazil and pressured the state to abandon its politics of silence.

Although Brazil’s long period of official silence presents some challenges to transitional justice studies, the Brazilian case emerges as a test case to assess the impact of delayed mechanisms. Unlike its regional counterparts, Brazil has adopted a more gradual approach to reckoning with its authoritarian past. The first institutional measure, a reparations program, did not arrive until ten years after the democratic transition. As trials and memory work continue to progress throughout Latin America, Brazil provides insight into how and why transitional justice approaches change over time. Shifting social and political landscapes influence trajectories and outcomes.

Memory’s Turn traces the evolution of Brazil’s transitional justice process and acknowledges its complexities without treating the Brazilian experience as unusual or exceptional. By placing Brazil within a regional context, Rebecca Atencio offers a unique theoretical insight for transitional justice studies. Memory’s Turn provides scholars a model for conceptualizing the dynamic relationship between legal mechanisms and cultural works in post-conflict societies. Over the long term, Atencio’s theoretical framework will apply to other national and regional contexts and help scholars better understand the long-term impact of transitional justice measures in post-conflict societies.

[1] “Brazilian Truth Commission Has Historic Responsibility,” International Center for Transitional Justice, last modified May 11, 2012, https://www.ictj.org/news/brazilian-truth-commission-has-historic-responsibility.

[2] Zoltan Barany, The Soldier and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 128.

[3] Rebecca J. Atencio, Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil, (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 8.

[4] Ibid, 6-8.

[5] Ibid, 125.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

You’re Teaching WHAT?

Cross-posted from Chris Rose’s blog, where he regularly tells us Important and Useful Things and makes us laugh along the way. In addition to his many other accomplishments, Chris is the brains and motor behind our podcast 15 Minute History.

by Christopher Rose

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you … Terrorism and Extremist Movements. Ta-Da!The reaction that this has caused in a few people has been … well, probably predictable.

“You’re teaching WHAT?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Chris.”
“What does this have to do with your dissertation?” (I particularly like this question, as if any of the other courses I’ve ever taught have anything to do with my dissertation. In fact, I should like to meet anyone who teaches an undergraduate class on the topic of their dissertation.)

If there were one thing I would say that I didn’t think through on this one, it’s that maybe the semester I’m trying to finish writing and start revising my dissertation wasn’t the best time to also try and teach a brand-new class on material that I am not intimately familiar with.

I can do 20th century Middle East or the Rise of Islam in my sleep. However, that’s also the reason why I didn’t want to teach either of those courses again.

As an adjunct, I don’t get to innovate. I actually wouldn’t mind coming up with a class on The Middle Eastern Front in World War I, for example. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack there.

The issue is that I’m teaching a general education course under the topic “Challenges of Globalization.” For two semesters I taught a course on the 20th century Middle East in which I framed the topic question of whether it’s fair to blame the Skyes-Picot Treaty and European imperialism for the state of the region today (in two semesters, my students never quite figured out that this question…printed front, center, and top on the syllabus…would also be their final exam prompt).

Egypt had the strongest naval fleet in the Mediterranean at the time Spain discovered the New World, but most high school students don’t learn about that. To be fair, I didn’t really understand this until I was in grad school—and yet, I realized I was teaching undergraduates as if this were common knowledge.

A thoroughfare in the medieval quarter of Cairo. Egypt had the strongest naval fleet in the Mediterranean at the time Spain discovered the New World, but most high school students don’t learn about that. To be fair, I didn’t really understand this until I was in grad school—and yet, I realized I was teaching undergraduates as if this were common knowledge. (Photo: Chris Rose)

However, it was the aforementioned ability to recite this material in my sleep that, it turned out, was the problem. I realized about four weeks into my first semester of teaching that the problem wasn’t my students, it was me. I assumed a lot of background knowledge. Way too much background knowledge.

Here I was talking about the inner workings of the Ottoman Empire when I knew from years of experience that the Texas world history curriculum barely mentioned it. (Trust me, I know.) I was speaking in shorthand and my students didn’t have the answer key.

I quickly went into revision mode, changing my approach for the rest of the semester. The next semester, I revised the curriculum further, tightening the focus and narrowing the amount of material covered.

I also realized that it might be best to get away from the material for a bit. After two semesters of teaching it (and the extra hours both doing prep work as well as writing a dissertation), I was bored with the material and recognized the dangers of what this might mean in terms of my attention to the class and my propensity to shorthand.

What might help, I thought, would be a new subject entirely.

First, I dumped the long academic course name with the colon (yes, I did that).

Then, I decided to focus on student expectations. My university has a strong criminology program, as well as a strong political science program. How do I appeal to those majors?

So … the idea of doing a course on terrorism sprang to mind. (I honestly don’t remember why). It would be comparative; after all, despite popular memes to the contrary, terrorism is not just a Middle Eastern phenomenon. I wanted it to be global in focus. But, other than South Asia, in which I do (terrifyingly) have the requisite number of credit hours to pass myself off as an expert … was I qualified to teach a globally focused class?

The first modern terrorist groups formed in tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century. One group, The People’s Will, assassinated Tsar Alexander II in hopes of sparking a popular revolution.

Then I had an idea: what if I didn’t teach the entire class? What if the class, working in groups, each took responsibility for a particular movement in a particular global region, and contributed to the learning environment? The more I thought about this, the more I liked it; and others that I shared the idea with were enthusiastic.

So, I put a proposal together and it went on the course schedule and I did what pretty much everyone does: I forgot about it until about two months beforehand when the campus bookstore started prodding me for my textbook choice.

Despite what seemed like insurmountable odds and a few nights of lost sleep, I produced a syllabus and guidelines for a class that I hope will be not only be successful but also interesting to my students.

I was honest with my students the first day: this is an experiment, and if this isn’t what you’re looking for in a course and you’re not on my roster at the end of the week, no hard feelings. I lost a couple, but the vast majority stayed put.

So, here’s to an experiment. I look forward to sharing how it goes.

More from Christopher Rose on Not Even Past:

Search for Armenian Children in Turkey

Mapping and Microbes

Exploring the Silk Route

Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert (2015)

Sven Beckert places cotton at the center of his colossal history of modern capitalism, arguing that the growth of the industry was the “launching pad for the broader Industrial Revolution.” Beckert follows cotton through a staggering spatial and chronological scope. Spanning five thousand years of cotton’s history, with a particular focus on the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, Empire of Cotton is a tale of the spread of industrialization and the rise of modern global capitalism. Through emphasizing the international nature of the cotton industry, Beckert exemplifies how history of the commodity and global history are ideally suited to each other. Produced over the course of ten years and with a transnational breadth of archive material, Empire of Cotton is a bold, ambitious work that confronts challenges that many historians could only dream of attempting. The result is a popular history that is largely successful in attaining the desirable combination of being both rigorous and entertaining.

Beckert frames his history of cotton with two intertwining terms: “war capitalism” and “industrial capitalism.” Both terms lack precise definitions but Beckert generally refers to their underlying themes. A play on the term “war communism” from the Russian Civil War, “war capitalism” was a period when European statesmen and capitalists established their dominance in global cotton networks, often through violent, imperialist means of conquest and expansion. Beckert counters the notion that Europeans controlled the cotton industry as a result of scientific innovation, arguing that, “Europeans became important to the worlds of cotton not because of new inventions or superior technologies, but because of their ability to reshape and then dominate global cotton networks.” “Industrial capitalism” evokes the more discreet ways in which states intervened to protect the interests of global capitalists through more diplomatic channels, preserving the initial gains made through “war capitalism.” Neither concept is exclusive, with “war capitalism” and “industrial capitalism” continually interacting with one another and overlapping chronologically, as Beckert underscores how “industrial capitalism’s institutional innovations facilitated war capitalism’s death.”

Enslaved African Americans pick cotton in Savannah, Georgia, sometime between 1867 and 1890 (via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)

Through the discussion of these two concepts, Beckert underlines the importance of forced labor, with an emphasis on slavery in particular, in the development of global capitalism. Beckert claims that “the flow of cotton from the United States to Europe and of capital in the opposite direction” was at the core of developing international trade networks. The author echoes an important and emerging argument: modern global capitalism relied upon the growth of the cotton industry, which was itself indebted to slavery, as “cotton demanded quite literally a hunt for labor.” Beckert asserts that the “physical and psychological violence of holding millions in bondage were of central importance to the expansion of cotton production in the United States and of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.” Empire of Cotton subsequently reads as a critique of long held complacencies about the centrality of the slave trade to the development of modern capitalism.

Beckert establishes a wide-ranging, holistic study that glides from country to country, focusing on the market of cotton rather than diving into the weeds of national specificities. One of the great strengths of macrohistory is that these works tend not to be restricted by the confines of the nation state, providing a means of escaping exceptionalism and promoting a more global approach to historical study. Expanding on such works as Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History and more recently Elizabeth Abbott’s Sugar: A Bittersweet History Beckert outlines a vast narrative told through the lens of a singular commodity. With regard to the history of cotton specifically, Beckert largely complements Giorgio Riello’s 2013 book Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World, which traces cotton production from 1000-2000. While there is common ground between the two authors in terms of scope and a focus on the economics of the cotton industry, Beckert emphasizes the direct link between the cotton industry and the tumultuous development of modern capitalism, whereas Riello is more interested in the processes of globalization.

“The queen of industry, or the new south:” Cover illustration shows a man labeled “King Cotton” leaning against a bale of cotton and stomping on the back of a slave in 1861, textile mills spewing smoke as African Americans pick cotton in 1882, and Columbia working at a spinning machine in the middle (via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)

For all its impressive qualities, however, there are certain shortcomings that should be addressed. There is a lack of conceptual engagement with violence, modern capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, each of which merit further attention. Moreover, “war capitalism” and “industrial capitalism” are rather elusive analytical frameworks, making it difficult to directly discern between the two and their distinct utility. Additionally, the unquestioned preeminence of cotton presents an overly monocausal explanation for larger trends that are arguably more multifaceted. For instance, E.A. Wrigley (2010) argues that in 1801 the British Empire’s four largest industries were cotton, wool, building, and leather – with each component being of roughly equal size. Therefore, the assumption that cotton has a direct connection to industrialization prior to 1801, and is the most important of the four largest industries, warrants more of a discussion. Furthermore, there is a curious evasion, considering Beckert’s revisionist stance, of one of the most unavoidable scholarly traditions surrounding modern global capitalism: Marxism. Perhaps this is partially due to the enormity inherent in such a study. Nevertheless, cotton’s centrality is taken as a given, and while it would be perfectly legitimate to argue that the cotton industry was vital to the Industrial Revolution, Empire of Cotton’s analytical base would be on much firmer ground with a deeper conceptual engagement with violence and capitalism.

On the other hand, it could also be argued that Beckert is merely being conscious of his readership and aiming to make academic scholarship more accessible to a wider audience. What is lost through a certain amount of oversight in analyzing conceptual frameworks is counterbalanced by its engaging narrative. Empire of Cotton is more than deserving of its wide acclaim, demonstrating the potential of ambitious and exciting trends in historiographical inquiry. The author strikes a fine balance between effortlessly fluent prose and complex subject matter, making a significant contribution to the fields of global history and history of the commodity as well as enticing a wider audience. While Empire of Cotton is a dense, impressively researched book, Beckert manages to appeal to a broader audience and create a fluently written, academically rigorous account of cotton’s journey from a local, artisanal product to a global, mass-produced commodity.

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