A (Cyber) Damsel in Distress: Digital Memory and Self-Figuration in Mariana Eva Perez’s Diario de una princesa montonera – 110% Verdad

Jordana Blejmar
pages: 1-15
First published online: 09 November 2017
Version: 09 November 2017

ABSTRACT
This article discusses the commonalities and differences between traditional ways of bearing witness to trauma (i.e. testimony, memoires) and more experimental ones in new media. It focuses on one of the most provocative Argentine autofictions to date, namely Mariana Eva Perez’s blog Diario de una princesa montonera – 110% Verdad (2009-2012), where Perez shares details of her everyday life as a daughter of parents disappeared during the 1976-1983 dictatorship with her loyal followers. I argue that the use of new media and an autofictional character (the Montonera Princess) allow her to talk about her painful past without the somber tone and restraint that we often associate with testimony. Diario de una princesa montonera has some attributes of conventional diaries such as their focus on everyday life and their colloquial tone. But Perez relies on the attributes of online diaries (interactivity, immateriality, ubiquitousness) to approach disappearance, a state crime characterized by its spectral/immaterial nature. The re-mediation between old and new media helps her deliver a contribution to the genre ‘memories of the dictatorship’ that is specifically tailored for the digital age.

Key words: Digital memory, Remediation, Autofiction, Blog, Dictatorship.