Covert Violence and Social Paralysis in Authoritarian Argentina

• In Event: Local and Regional Dynamics of Autocracy

Abstract

Researchers frequently explain the use of covert state violence (e.g., forced disappearances) by referencing plausible deniability: states hide their violence to avoid costly domestic and international condemnation. I argue that, particularly within states, campaigns of forced disappearance are not plausibly deniable, but this implausibility is by design. Rather than simply a way to avoid costs, covert violence provides unique benefits: principal among them is its effectiveness as a social paralytic. Creating violent uncertainty (surrounding the disappeared’s fates as well as civilians’ own) allows coup-proofed security apparatuses to imitate the paralysis imposed by extensive intelligence networks usually only available to unitary security apparatuses. However, while fearing that everyone around you is an informant may paralyze you and isolate you from all social ties, the isolation process under covert violence is incomplete. Rather than atomizing society (which implies breaking it down into its smallest complete units), forced disappearance "molecularizes" it. Shared loss can bring the disappeared’s inner circle together, even as it severs ties to outer circles that fear being labeled “subversive,” too. If enough of these “molecules” form, a tipping point is reached: there is solidarity in loss, and it can galvanize as well as paralyze. In this paper, I explore these dynamics through documents and testimony from the last Argentine dictatorship, 1976 to 1983.

Author

• Madeleine I Stevens, University of Chicago