Surviving State Terror

Through the connecting thread of the body and embodiment, Sutton delivers a complex, creative, and powerful analysis of gender-based violence in Argentinas clandestine detention centers. The author masterfully reveals intersections of state terror and gender ideologies with clear relevance across space and time. A must read ~Cecilia Menjívar,Author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala

Torture survivors are witnesses. Many people do not want to hear their voices. Barbara Sutton has listened to scores of Argentinian women who survived to detail the misogynist lengths to which a military junta will go to stay in power. Sutton reveals how our listening to these women is crucial for sustainable democracy. ~Cynthia Enloe,Author of The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

How history is told is political. Who tells it is political. How the voices of those telling it are portrayed is political. Barbara Sutton makes clear choices in this powerful book to bring forward the voices of powerful women. Yes, women who have been tortured in ways that are unfathomable, and still their stories reveal their power. ~Marina Sitrin, NACLA Report on the Americas

Sutton’s work is both timely and pressing, illuminating how state violence is not simply a matter of perpetrators and victims but is connected to persistent discourses and practices of violence aimed at turning captive people into humiliated, objectified, and sexualized bodies, stripped of identity and rights. What is at stake are lessons ... that move between the past and the present and across geographical boundaries to connect gender discourse to materiality, survival to resistance, and embodied memories from survivors to memories about the body that are culturally produced. ~Jennifer Earles, Gender & Society

By amplifying the voices of women who endured state violence in Argentina, Sutton demonstrates the social dimensions of collective memory, the archive, and the capacities of societies to attend closely to a range of voices who have been targeted for state violence. The significance of excavating such narratives is underscored by both the parallels of state violence to the many forms of gendered violence women face daily and the impunity many torturers and state officials continue to enjoy in the aftermath of state violence. … Sutton powerfully demonstrates that state violence is at once the exception and, at the same time, is the rule. ~Amina Zarrugh, Sociological Inquiry

[B]y accessing these voices the archive in question plays an important role through which testimonies are not only stored, but are performed. In opening the potentially ‘inert’ archive, Sutton’s work is relevant for those beyond Argentina, and indeed Latin America, who are interested in violence, testimony and women’s resistance, and in the connection between sexual and political violence and resistance. ~Cara Levey, Oral History

The last military regime in Argentina (1976–1983) ended over 35 years ago. Yet, like many countries that have gone through periods of gross human rights violations under authoritarian regimes, the country still struggles with how to remember what happened and ensure that it never happens again. Barbara Sutton’s book Surviving State Terror: Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina makes an important contribution to these scholarly and practical efforts toward transitional justice and collective memory. ~Michelle D. Bonner, Contemporary Sociology

Surviving State Terror nos conecta con unas utopías que son quizás más frágiles y precarias que las que conformaban el horizonte político de futuro de los setentas. Pero son utopías que se toman en serio la derrota, el dolor y la pérdida. En un momento político que invita constantemente al optimismo banal o al pesimismo rotundo, resulta profundamente esperanzador leer un libro que no le teme a la palabra utopía y que establece una relación crítica con el pasado para ayudarnos a imaginar que, a pesar de todo, el presente no está clausurado. ~Nayla Luz Vacarezza, Corpus

Las historias que Bárbara Sutton despliega con detalle y sutileza en su libro no cuentan circunstancias individuales, 'aunque individuos remarcables emergen de la historia de las luchas por los derechos humanos', sino que en su ejemplaridad establecen legados activistas que nos permiten 'imaginar de otro modo' formas de solidaridad para continuar el trabajo de fortalecer la memoria y buscar la verdad y la justicia para las futuras generaciones. ~Claudia Bacci, Revista Transas

En efecto, la potencia interpretativa (y, fundamentalmente, política) de este libro no se anuda solo en la audaz y cuidadosa recuperación de esas voces, otrora vulneradas y silenciadas, sino también, y fundamentalmente, a su advertencia precisa y contundente sobre los modos aún vigentes de sometimiento de este y otros grupos que han sido y continúan siendo social, cultural y políticamente vulnerados. ~Julieta Lampasona, Clepsidra