Head Shaving: Archives and Repertoires of Shame

Abstract: In this article we address the intersection of the archive and sexual violence by examining the Francoist practice of shaving the heads of Republican women during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and at the start of the dictatorship. We question the limits of the archive to record actions or embodied narratives that leave few material traces, and about the conditions under which memories that are saturated by violence and trauma can be excavated. We analyze two of the few extant photographs: in them we see how the processes of performativity that accompany acts of violence unfold and expand over time. The photographs reify or represent shame and silence, but they also make remembering possible. The ways in which the photographs have circulated heighten the unstable, fragile nature of these haunted archives.