A01=Vikki Bell
Antofagasta
Archives
Argentina
arts of dramatization
artworks
Atacama desert
Author_Vikki Bell
Carmen Cifuentes Bueno
Category=ABA
Category=JBSL
Category=JHBA
Centro Nacional
Chacabuco
Colombia
current political situations
detention center
Diettes
Disappearance
ecology of practices
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Erika Diettes
FUNVISOL
Gonzalo Sanchez
interview
Isabelle Stengers
Jorge Muller
Justice archives
memory
museum of memory
Nancy
Oratorio
photography
promises
Santiago
sites of memory
speculative
survivance
transitional archives
trial footage
violence
Wojtek Ziemilski
Product details
- ISBN 9781478032960
- Weight: 476g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Promises Beyond Memory, Vikki Bell shows how archives of contemporary political violence in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia challenge the idea that simply sheltering the documentation of violence is sufficient to fulfill the obligations of attending to the past. Beyond mere preservation, these archives, museums, and sites of memory invite exploratory modes of enlivening the past through aesthetic practices like photography, installation, film, and performance. These practices foster the “survivance” of memory where populations still grapple with legacies of violence and often state-sponsored mass disappearance and torture. Rather than produce a definitive account of the past, such survivance facilitates polyvocal articulations that open deeply political and ethical questions around contested histories. They may even create moments for what Bell terms “tender forgetting” –– the ability to remember without reawakening trauma. Integrating theory, extensive archival work, and interviews with artists, archivists, museum workers, and survivors of state violence, Bell analyses the creative ways that archives pass on stories of violence as they seek to defend against attempts to rewrite the past.
Vikki Bell is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of numerous books, including The Art of Post-Dictatorship: Ethics and Aesthetics in Transitional Argentina.
