Affective Politics of Sensation: Anonymity and Transtemporal Activism in Argentina

Th is article deals with the aesthetic mobilization of anonymity in Argentine activist practices. Focusing on the specifi c intervention of El Siluetazo, the public drawing and placarding of nameless silhouettes during the mili-tary dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, anonymity will be explored as instigating an aff ective politics of sensation. Diff erent from the human rights discourse on disappearance, which is concerned with politics of identifi cation of the disappeared and the repressors, anonymity off ers forms of aff ective relaying beyond identity. Th e logic of identity will be discussed in relation to a “ distribution of the sensible” that takes aesthetics of sense perception as the target of control (Rancière, 2004). Th rough investigating the silhouettes not as a universal signifi er of disap-pearance but as an aesthetic expression potentially moving across space and time, I will unfold a media ecological conception of activist practices and their capacities of activating transtemporal forms of resistance.