Born of political repression, censorship and torture, the novel Zero: romance pré-histórico by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão was revised in congruence with the intensity of repression in Brazil. In 2001, a new edition integrated pages that had been previously excluded from the novel. In this essay, I borrow narratological terms from Gérard Genette and David Herman to examine the most politically charged sections from the missing pages. A close reading sheds light on the relationship between what Herman calls the storyworld, that is, the fictional world of Latíndia-America that Loyola created, and what we think of as the real world in which Loyola was writing. I analyze how the content of the missing pages challenges the hegemonic ideology of the regime that banned Zero in its construction of a meta-commentary on neocolonial relations between Brazil and the United States. By employing Elaine Scarry’s work on the structure of torture, I argue that censorship and torture operate both textually and extra-textually in Zero. The missing pages illuminate this relationship in their criticism of a regime characterized by its dependence on censorship and torture to maintain its illegitimate and flagging power.

This dissertation considers theory from the field of Memory Studies to compare the relationships between transitional justice, cultural production, and discourses on state terror and human rights. The most recent civic-military dictatorships in Brazil (1964-1985), Uruguay (1973-1985), and Argentina (1976-1983) remain unresolved histories in the collective imaginaries of each country. The fields of literary and media studies often point to the cultural production that represents this period as contributing to the construction of memory, and, therefore, against impending oblivion. My dissertation moves beyond the binary logic of remembrance and oblivion to analyze the ways in which cultural production shapes our understanding of the dictatorships and their aftermath. Chapter 1, “The Survivor on Screen: Film in Post-dictatorship Brazil,” focuses on the films Que bom te ver viva (L�cia Murat, 1989), A��o entre amigos (Beto Brant, 1998), and Hoje (Tata Amaral, 2011) to understand the extent to which they reinforce or reject the notion that the only people affected by the dictatorship were the militants who took up arms against the regime. Chapter 2, “Unfinished Stories: Film in Post-Dictatorship Uruguay,” analyzes the films Zanahoria (Enrique Buchichio, 2014), Matar a todos (Esteban Schroeder, 2007), and Secretos de lucha (Maiana Bidegain, 2007), which all depict the past as unresolved. Each of these films has an inconclusive ending, implying that Uruguayan transitional justice is yet to come. Chapter 3, “Towards Inclusive Victimhood and Memory: Post-dictatorship Film in Argentina,” analyzes Cautiva (Gast�n Biraben, 2003), Los Rubios (Albertina Carri, 2003), and Buenos Aires Viceversa (Alejandro Agresti, 1996) as examples of works that challenge the canonized memories of the dictatorship as well as the widely accepted notions of victimhood, pushing for the consideration of traditionally excluded subjectivities. This chapter addresses the intergenerational struggle over memory and the victims of economic crises in the post-dictatorship. This dissertation investigates the impact that political and legal frameworks have on filmmaking, on storytelling, and on how the past is remembered, contributing to research on the intersection between memory studies, transitional justice, and the cultural field.