Abstract: | In A Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz fully exposes the nightmare of sadism, paranoia, and deception the military dictatorship unleashed on the Argentine people during the Dirty War, a nightmare that would claim over 30,000 civilians from 1976 to 1983. Feitlowitz explores the perversion of language under state terrorism, both as it's used to conceal and confuse and to domesticate torture and murder. Based on six years of research and moving interviews with peasants, intellectuals, activists, and bystanders, A Lexicon of Terror examines the full impact of this catastrophic period from its inception to the present, in which former torturers, having been pardoned and released from prison, live side by side with those they tortured. Passionately written and impossible to put down, A Lexicon of Terror shows us both the horror of the war and the heroism of those who resisted and survived. |
