GEOGRAPHIES OF PAIN: A STUDY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND DISPLACEMENT IN EDUARDO QUIROGA'S ON FOREIGN GROUND

War narratives are mostly built on identifiable patterns like cliches, symbols, myth or historical precedents. Eduardo Quiroga’s On Foreign Ground shows the Argentinian brutality during the Falklands war of 1982 which was fought between Argentina and Great Britain. The hero Enrique Molina, an Argentine soldier writes in a dairy form the desolation of the Falklands under the siege and the brutalities committed by the Argentinian government against anyone who questions them and the beautiful love he has experienced in Paris with Sarah. There is a ‘loss of self’ in modern war novels when the character cannot justify his war experience alluding to general values or a collective ideology. What remains is an excess of different memories and the remains of unitary history which is scattered throughout the social landscape. The political stakes in memory are not always clear. The struggle over the past is not to achieve already constituted interests but to constitute those interests itself. Another interesting aspect is how violence affects individual consciousness and collective identifications in the formation of nation. The memory of violence is not only rooted in people’s minds and bodies but also inscribed onto the making of a nation and national identity. To explain how a nation is constructed and transformed through memory, a detailed analysis of how memory is perceived, experienced and transformed is to be included. This research article attempts to examine the underlying violence and trauma that shape the soldiers’ psyche and how it affects families and relationships.