Sites of memory from the perspective of contemporary history and traumatic pasts: notes for their study from Latin America

The concept of lieux de mémoire, developed by the French historian Pierre Nora, has been widely exported to other latitudes on a global scale. In line with the well-known globalization of memory, its progressive incorporation into the field of memory studies in Latin America has been a success. Since then, however, its relevance has been little examined in depth. This article reflects on this gap, returning to the complexity of the notion in order to channel its use from the perspective of the history of the present time. To this end, and through some representative cases located in Argentina, theoretical and methodological guidelines are proposed based on the crossing of the contributions of the original historical current and that which studies traumatic pasts. In this way, it is hoped to contribute to a more precise knowledge of the meanings attributed to sites of memory in our latitudes.

Keywords:
Sites of memory; History of the present time; Traumatic pasts