Alcira Soust Scaffo as Nachleben. Through a possible montage

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the artistic and political figure of the Uruguayan poet Alcira Soust Scaffo (1924-1197). Her existential adventure is reinterpreted by the author through Benjamin’s concept of Nachleben. A survivor of political and social violence and psychiatric segregation, Alcira Soust Scaffo builds a clinical, aesthetic and political knot by reassembling detached pieces of her life. The result is an ethical testimony of how the Borromean knot theorized by Jacques Lacan can intertwine with Aby Warburg’s and George Didi-Huberman’s reflections on the heterogeneous elements that make a work, like a life, a place of survival.