This panel explores intersections of memory, identity, and decoloniality in Latin American and diasporic contexts, emphasizing how communicational, aesthetic, and narrative practices reconfigure the legacies of colonialism and migration. Bringing together research on collective memory, transnational trauma, diasporic identities, and Black aesthetic temporalities, the panel highlights how diverse forms of storytelling, scholarly, oral, and fictional, enact epistemic resistance and generate alternative archives of belonging.
This discussion is framed within the Rememora network, which gathers Communication scholars and researchers from related fields to foster interinstitutional, collaborative research on memory in Latin America. Rememora emphasizes the materialization, production, and circulation of memories, as well as the temporalities, affective dimensions, and political dynamics of remembering and forgetting across cultural and communicational processes.
One presentation maps the field of Communication and Memory in Latin America, tracing its theoretical and methodological contributions to articulate a distinct, decolonial approach grounded in regional histories and experiences. Another examines transnational migrant women and their narratives of trauma, highlighting how storytelling mediates healing, agency, and meaning-making amid gendered and racialized vulnerability.
A third contribution analyzes autobiographical discourse among Lebanese migrants in Mexico, showing how memory and silence intertwine in the reconstruction of diasporic identity. These narratives, situated in the emotional “borderlands” of migration, function as affective counter-archives that challenge dominant historical accounts.
Finally, a study of Black Cultural Memory and Black Aesthetic Time in Latin American streaming fiction demonstrates how Black creators reimagine temporalities and reconstruct Black presence within postcolonial media ecologies.
Together, these works articulate a decolonial grammar of memory that bridges personal and collective experience, local and transnational histories, and analog and digital forms of expression, fostering new imaginaries of justice, resistance, and belonging in the postcolonial world.
Luciana Amormino, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, - Memory Studies and Communication in Latin America: Outlining a Research Field
Research on memory from Latin American perspectives is particularly tied to the field of human rights, as it engages with disputes over narratives and the enduring presence of traumatic pasts, such as the colonial and dictatorial experiences, as well as with the violent civilizational processes that shaped our societies. Considering its connection with Communication entails examining, in particular, its relationship with narrative, experience, and identities. In this regard, the article seeks to provide an overview of current studies on Communication and Memory within the Latin American context, in order to investigate the themes, approaches, and theoretical analytical perspectives that have contributed to shaping this field of inquiry. To this end, the analysis draws from the main Communication conferences held in Brazil (Compós, Intercom, and Rede Alcar) and from journals and research organizations in Communication and Social Sciences across Latin America (ALAIC, CIESPAL, CLACSO, and LASA), focusing on the past ten years. The aim is to reflect on the historicity of this field, as well as to examine the theoretical frameworks, themes, and authors that sustain it, contributing to a broader understanding of how memory is approached from a communicational perspective. It is well known that much of the foundational theoretical framework in memory studies is European and North American. In light of this, it becomes necessary to consolidate what has been produced within Latin America in this field. Thus, our proposal to map and analyze studies on memory and communication in Latin America seeks to strengthen a distinct line of thought on memory grounded in our own realities, bringing visibility to the formation of a decolonial and Latin American centered perspective on memory.
Talitha Ferraz, PPGCine-UFF - "The presence absence of cinema ruins: intersections between technostalgia and hauntology" We will discuss the ruinification of old cinemas in degraded areas of the Rio de Janeiro city, arguing that the deactivation and consequent collapse of cinematic leisure buildings can also be part of broader social projects that operate through a systematic destitution of spaces, memories, and existential territories on the peripheries. We will reflect on the cases of the ruins of the Cinema Palace, Cinema Rosário/Ramos, Cinema Santa Helena/Olaria and Cine Rio Palace –, understanding the abandonment of these spaces as an erasure of cinema culture memories. We explore the concept of “technostalgia” (Ferraz, 2024; Menke, 2017) to analyse the relationship between the remains of cinemas and the process of dematerialisation and obsolescence caused by industrial and perceptual investments in the audiovisual sector, considering the resonance that old, lost, ruined, or threatened media produce in urban environments and sociocultural practices and imaginaries. To propose the notion of “urban-cinematic ruins” we will refer to the concepts of “ruin” (Benjamin, 1984; Boym, 2011), and “hauntology” (Derrida, 1994; Fisher, 2022), reflecting on the spectral presence of extinct cinemas. Keywords: Cinema Ruins; Technostalgia; Hauntology. References: Benjamin, W. (1984). Origem do drama barroco alemão. Brasiliense. Boym, S. (2011). Ruinophilia: Appreciation of ruins. In Atlas of Transformation. Transit. http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/r/ruinophilia/ruinophilia-appreciation-of-ruins-svetlana-boym.html Derrida, J. (1994). Espectros de Marx: o Estado da dívida, o trabalho do luto e a nova Internacional. Relume-Dumará.
Lucia Santa-Cruz, ESPM - "The Sound of Nostalgia: Singing for Democracy" On September 21, 2025, thousands of Brazilians protested at more than 30 cities against some controversial National Congress initiatives. Named anti democratic, these projects arose popular disagreement. A central feature of these protests was the presence of elder singers with careers marked by resistance against the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Their participation reactivated cultural memories of when music functioned as a vital space of democratic expression and political dissent. A strong wave of nostalgia framed this mobilization of memory. When musicians performed songs that once symbolized opposition to authoritarianism, audiences relived collective emotions tied to moments of national struggle. Nostalgia operated as a bridge between past and present, linking the historical experience of dictatorship resistance to contemporary concerns about democratic fragility. The repertoire of protest songs, sung collectively during the demonstrations, worked as both a memorial practice and a political statement, reaffirming continuity in the defense of democratic values. The September 21 demonstrations illuminate how nostalgia functions not simply as a passive sentiment but as an active political resource, being restorative (Boym, 2001), regressive as retrotopia (Bauman, 2017) or future oriented (Santa Cruz, 2025). By invoking artists and songs associated with democratic resistance, the event demonstrated how cultural memory can inspire collective action, while also raising questions about the limits of nostalgia as a tool for sustaining democratic imaginaries in a fragmented and polarized society. In this presentation, we will discuss how music can evoke nostalgic feelings as a powerful instrument for connecting times while designing political imaginaries. References: Bauman, Zygmunt (2017). Retrotopia. London : Polity. Boym, Svetlana (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. New York, Basic Books. Santa Cruz, Lucia (2025). Nostalgia Toward the Future. In : Becker, Tobias; Trigg, Dylan (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia. London: Routledge.
20260729T154520260729T1715America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires3.8. Memory, Identity, and Decoloniality in Latin American ContextsSV101MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
