O perdão em âmbito público como horizonte para a ação e o futuro da memória.

Abstract

This thesis proposes a theoretical-critical approach based on forgiveness and nonforgiveness in the public sphere, problematizing their relationships with ethics, memory, and politics in the face of the severe human rights violations that occurred under the recent dictatorships of the Southern Cone. The work begins with the questioning of the possibility or impossibility of forgiving perpetrators of crimes against humanity and of public forgiveness as both a horizon for political action and a future for memory. The research is structured around negative dialectics as a perspective for thinking about the non-identical, combining a literature review, documentary research, technical visits, participant observation, interviews, and opinion surveys. The methodological path was divided into two phases: the analysis of non-forgiveness in memory museums of the Southern Cone, understood as a model for reflecting on public memory policies, and the exploration of forgiveness and non-forgiveness in transitional experiences in Southern Cone countries. This involved distancing through comparison with international experiences, notably in Argentina, South Africa, and Colombia, which allowed for understanding different constellations of ideas, values, and policies related to forgiveness and an approach based on Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. The results indicate that, although crimes against humanity are legally imprescriptible and “unforgivable,” forgiveness cannot be reduced to forgetting or impunity, nor confused with amnesties, pardons, or statutes of limitations. The study demonstrates how the slogan “ni perdón” reflects a “happy consciousness” in the compulsion to identity in memory work, while simultaneously revealing social and political demands for public expressions of forgiveness. It is concluded that forgiveness, as a horizon for action and a future for memory, can be conceived as a possibility for reconstructing democratic relations, for coexistence based on reciprocity and mutual recognition. However, its realization remains open, depending on historical, political, and subjective conditions. The thesis thus reaffirms the necessity of thinking about forgiveness in its public dimension — not as an immediate solution, nor as a “collective forgiveness”, but as a critical and unfinished exercise in processing the past, which can contribute to building a "common world" where no human being is considered less than human, where all have the right to have rights, and are recognized as capable subjects able to act, narrate, judge, promise, remember, and forgive.