The petty Memory: historical novel and dismantling of the monument

Abstract

The historical investigation has been characterized by the development of self-conscience processes which link the investigator with its own present and confront him with the need to reconsider the entailing questions for the reconstruction of the past. The history text is never completely ended, nor definetly fixed in its written format. One of the constitutive elements of this process is memory, which has revealed, in the last years, as a problematizing axis for the colective historical experience, its reconstruction and interpretation. On this article we follow Antonio Gil's novel ‘‘The stingy memory’’, in order to illustrate the debate about memory taken place in Chile, radicalizad after appearing in the media the partial results of the National Commission on Prison and Torture.