This book opened with the story of a house. So too does it end. This story comes in different acts, which enfold one another.

Act 1: A house under arrest

In Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Jacques Derrida argues that the first figure of an archive is topological. It is the violence of a power, a lineage, a place, a domicile: ‘It is thus, in this domiciliation, in this house arrest, that archives take place.’ In the aftermath of Argentina's dictatorship, the relatives of the victims have commanded the house of mourning. To some extent, they have kept this house under arrest. They have been the ones who had the force to command the legitimacy of remembering. As such, they have been the guardians of the processes of mourning. This right has been animated by the power of blood. This book, however, has sought to show how the domiciliation of this archive has been displaced. In this sense, it has encompassed a movement of transference of the experience of loss, one that goes from the relatives to the broader Argentine society. Non-biological feelings of kinship have re-occupied the house.

In order to illustrate this process of re-occupation, this book has delineated a non-normative archive. It is an archive of unconventional acts of mourning. It does not rely exclusively on blood but on bonds that have been forged through acts of coming up against violence.