Writing from Exile: Memory and Resistance to the Dictatorship in La casa de los conejos, by Laura Alcoba

Abstract

This paper examines how exile is re-signified in Laura Alcoba’s novel La casa de los conejos (2008). The narrative reconstructs the traumatic history of Argentina’s last dictatorship through the childhood memories of the protagonist-narrator, who accompanies her mother in a forced exile in France. Situated at the intersection of literary genres, the novel uniquely portrays the role of female characters in politics, depicting their daily lives in the struggle for democracy while problematizing gender stereotypes and other conceptual notions related to childhood, identity, belonging, national ideals, and resistance. Drawing on Edmundo Garrido Alarcón’s (2012) theoretical reflections on exile, in dialogue with Michel Pollak’s (1989) concept of subterranean memory and Elizabeth Jelin’s (2002) notion of conflicting memories, we analyze how exile becomes a fundamental space of enunciation, enabling the narrator to establish critical distance and a dual perspective to reflect on authoritarianism and the historical fissures of both her native country and global society.