Human Rights Movement and Discourse. Its emergence and constituition in Argentina (Poliedros – Serie Ernesto Laclau)

This book accounts for the process of emergence and constitution of the human rights movement and discourse during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Central to this account is the contention that the movement’s emergence and constitution should not be understood as a necessary or as a natural response to the atrocities carried out by the last military regime, but instead as the result of a contingent process of political articulation and as a response which could have failed in its constitution and success.Thus, the appearance of the human rights movement and discourse in the country can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to this very process of popular mobilisation and political articulation that took place during 1976-1982.