In Disappearing Acts, Diana Taylor looks at how national identity
is shaped, gendered, and contested through spectacle and
spectatorship. The specific identity in question is that of
Argentina, and Taylor’s focus is directed toward the years 1976
to 1983 in which the Argentine armed forces were pitted against the
Argentine people in that nation’s "Dirty War." Combining
feminism, cultural studies, and performance theory, Taylor analyzes
the political spectacles that comprised the war—concentration
camps, torture, "disappearances"—as well as the rise of
theatrical productions, demonstrations, and other performative
practices that attempted to resist and subvert the Argentine
military. Taylor uses performance theory to explore how public
spectacle both builds and dismantles a sense of national and gender
identity. Here, nation is understood as a product of communal
"imaginings" that are rehearsed, written, and staged—and
spectacle is the desiring machine at work in those imaginings.
Taylor argues that the founding scenario of Argentineness stages
the struggle for national identity as a battle between men—fought
on, over, and through the feminine body of the Motherland. She
shows how the military’s representations of itself as the model
of national authenticity established the parameters of the conflict
in the 70s and 80s, feminized the enemy, and positioned the
public—limiting its ability to respond. Those who challenged the
dictatorship, from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to progressive
theater practitioners, found themselves in what Taylor describes as
"bad scripts." Describing the images, myths, performances, and
explanatory narratives that have informed Argentina’s national
drama, Disappearing Acts offers a telling analysis of the
aesthetics of violence and the disappearance of civil society
during Argentina’s spectacle of terror.
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