Samenvatting

In this article, we try to answer the question of how and why the stories of the victims of attacks by the guerrilla movements in the 1970s in Argentina are currently silenced in the public sphere. We analyse how this collective denial is negotiated in human rights discourse. In particular, we show how strategic and essentialist silences as well as denial (literal, interpretative, implicatory) feature in political debates about human rights and political violence.