If I am a rebel, then we are. Debasement techniques and survival practices during the last military dictatorship in Argentina

Abstract

This essay aims to relate the concepts created over the debasement techniques that attack directly the central concept of humanism. These techniques have been developed by Gabriel Marcel on his work, “Man Against the Mass Society” and “The Revolt”, to recover dignity and solidarity between human beings, from the studies done by Albert Camus on his work “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”.
Our purpose is to establish this relationship from an event that is very delicate for the Argentinian people, the last military dictatorship, particularly from the tortures that women suffered as victims of this terrible event. We focus on this social group because we know that every form of violence against a person’s body has specific and abhorrent characteristics when it is perpetrated against women’s bodies. In a patriarchal society, women face every situation with a structural disadvantage just because they are women.
On the other hand, this work intends to inform about what the victims bore witness to. And, although this refers to their sufferings, it also refers to the importance of practices to take care of the other and of their own. They can be seen in the fellowship and solidarity these women have.
Finally, it is important to make reference to the fact that this work takes a gender perspective and leads us to a central question. What relationship can we establish between this event and feminism from the selected categories?