Abstract
In this article, I would like to suggest permanencies in the frames of thought in terms of barbarity and civilization in the speeches of perpetrators of serious State violence in Argentina. This research is based on extensive testimonies such as autobiographical accounts (« memoirs ») and non-judiciary interviews, from soldiers and policemen who were active just before and during Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and spoke a posteriori about this past. To carry a necessary glance on the transhistorical and relevant connotations of this notional couple, I will refer to historical works of the political culture approach. At first, through a genetical perspective, two key connotations of the barbarity / civilization dichotomy are located at its time of entry in the political language during the first part of the 19th century, in order to show under which form discourses produced 150 years later in the Argentinian context, are still impregnated from them. Then, specific persistencies of this notional couple are explored, from its moral to its identity-based dimension, when it is assimilated into the worldview of people who regularly transgressed the proscription of murder and torture.
Highlights
It is typical to speak about barbarity or acts of barbarity, certainly with good reason when one finds oneself commenting upon extreme State violence such as summary executions or acts of torture
The following article considers the paradox consisting in the fact that the same persons who commit such atrocities think in these terms. It explores the forms and the meanings taken by the barbarity / civilization dichotomy when it is spoken by the perpetrators themselves and when we can show that they are referring to such a category of thought
The title of this paper seems to present a paradox, because I am questioning about moral criterias of those who commited barbarities. It is more and more demonstrated within the researches on violence that such actors acted according to a moral frame (Welzer, 2005 ; Konitzer and Gross, 2009), and these notions of civilization and barbarity corresponded sufficiently well to the context of ideas of the last dictatorship in Argentine to make part of the frame of mind of his executioners, in this case in their retrospective testimonies
Summary
It is typical to speak about barbarity or acts of barbarity, certainly with good reason when one finds oneself commenting upon extreme State violence such as summary executions or acts of torture. On the title of this essay, barbarity is placed before civilization notably because I will endeavour to do a more intensive study of the first term : the one for itself but as an indissociable pole to its moral contrary Using these nouns as markers in the context of Argentina, they clearly hint to the subtitle of the work Facundo : civilización y barbarie written in 1845 by Jose Sarmiento who was afterwards elected president of the country (Sarmiento, 2003). This political text used to play a significant reception and role in the discernment of political and social conflicts in Argentina during the nineteenth and twentieth century, an inheritance in the world of ideas which was recounted by Maristella Svampa in a PhD thesis on the subject, which turned into a book (Svampa, 1994). Such a division in the frame of political struggle implies a very strong disqualification of the opponent
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