“[…] There is not one march on the 24th but several, there is not one plaza but several, there is not one human rights organization but many, there is not one identity of memory but as many as there are political, cultural, professional, regional, trade union identities, each one with its bias, each one with its own statements, but all of them without resolving in that square any of the differences that can be litigated, disputed, in other places”, Alejandro Kaufman writes as a preface to this book, that draws on of that thriving diversity.

The cracks of recent Argentine history; dilemmas in representation; the processes of memory, truth and justice; the challenges of building sites and archives; the updating of the struggles for human rights and sovereignty marked the debates over twelve years in the sessions on History, Memory and Communication held at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes since 2009.

Past/present… collects this thematic agenda and presents the contributions of researchers from different disciplines, who underline the validity of studies on memories both in their historical key and in their unavoidable political present. As Kaufman points out: “Regarding the origin of what concerns us, also vulnerable to oblivion, it is convenient to return, as is inevitable because it always breaks out again, to the testimonial root of the problem of memory, to the genealogy that accounts for of its origin […]. This is one of the categorical features of the problem of memory: 'never again' means always starting over as long as we don't want the horror to repeat itself."