Rumors as Testimonios of Insile in La mujer en cuestión (The Woman in Question) by María Teresa Andruetto

Abstract

During the 1976–1983 military regime in Argentina, many stories circulated about shocking violence and human rights violations, causing its citizens to become paralyzed by fear. Uncertainty and paranoia also created intense anxiety throughout Argentina’s society.¹ Rumors began to circulate so wildly that people began to accuse each other of various heinous acts. Whereas rumors are often seen as insignificant, unreliable, and untrue, during this period in Argentina no rumor was insignificant. People were murdered, imprisoned, tortured, and disappeared merely on the basis of a rumor. While from an historical perspective we can now see how rumors played such a significant and often tragic role for the Argentinean people, curiously, contemporary scholars have overlooked this critical issue. Recently, the Argentinean writer María Teresa Andruetto used rumor as the central narrative device in her 2003 La mujer en cuestión (The Woman in Question).² In this essay, I present the double articulation of the anti-testimonio (rumors) as a collective representation of Argentinean memory (narrative text). I demonstrate how this complex dichotomy offers a new perspective on testimonio and how those rumors attest to the phenomenon of insile as an individual rather than a collective experience.