Publications
Peer Reviewed Articles
Creating the self: The construction of identity through self-narration in autobiographical interviews
(2025). Philosophical Psychology, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2025.2608901
Autobiographical interviews are a key tool in various social science disciplines. Autobiographical narratives, the product of these interviews, suggest that individuals use self-narration to construct their identity. In addition to remembering, interviewees often engage in parallel additional mental tasks (AMTs), such as action evaluation, counterfactual imagination, and value expression. Although research on autobiographical interviews has highlighted the occurrence of these AMTs, the cognitive processes behind them remain underexplored. In this article, I draw on the theoretical framework of Simulation Theory, which is influential in the psychology and philosophy of memory, to examine the nature of AMTs and their role in identity construction. According to simulationist accounts, remembering personal past events relies on mental simulation as a general mechanism for episodic construction. I argue that this mechanism not only enables recalling information about the past but also supports AMTs that help achieve the agent’s current goals. In autobiographical interviews, the coordinated use of recalling information about the past and engaging in AMTs serves to construct identity through self-narration. AMTs play a key role in reinforcing or altering beliefs about the self by tapping into the malleability of memory and the need for coherence between memories and self-conceptions.
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Constructive Memory in Truth-Telling for Reconciliation
Guerrero-Velázquez, A. and Enciso, S.W. (2025). Journal of Applied Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1002/japp.70066
Truth-telling has, in diverse contexts, been conceptualised as a vehicle for achieving reconciliation following injustice. As a social and political phenomenon, it involves the communication of narratives grounded in episodic memory. Such narratives may fail to reproduce the details of past events and may even include details that were not present in the original experience. To explore this issue, we examine the conservative backlash against the testimonies of the Stolen Generations in Australia, where perceived inaccuracies in remembering were used to discredit victim-survivor testimony. We argue that this backlash was based on epistemic and conceptual errors, relying as it did on a mischaracterisation of False Memory Syndrome (FMS) and a narrow view of memory that does not align with the current scientific understanding. We propose that a constructive view of memory is better suited to the task of truth-telling and reconciliation, and we consider how the epistemic risks associated with this view might be addressed.
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Trauma is in the Response: Towards a Post-Causal Perspective in the Definition of Psychological Trauma (in Spanish)
(2024). Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso, 26, 75-102. https://doi.org/10.22370/rhv2024iss26pp75-102
(In Spanish) The concept of psychological trauma is polysemous and remains the subject of ongoing debate among scholars and researchers. One of the most significant discussions surrounding the definition of trauma concerns the relationship between the Traumatic Event (TE), Traumatic Memory (TM), and the Traumatic Response (TR). Different definitions of trauma proposed by internationally recognised organisations present the TE as the primary element and suggest a necessary causal relationship in which the TE is antecedent and TM and TR are consequent—what I refer to as a strong causal view. In this article, I argue that this view is problematic insofar as it fails to adequately explain important trauma-related effects that constitute anomalies for the causal position. I defend two main claims. First, the definition of psychological trauma should move beyond the requirement of a strong, TE-dependent causal relationship and transition towards a weak causal view. To this end, I review the discussion on causation in the philosophy of memory, which contrasts causal and postcausal theories, and on this basis propose two principles that can facilitate this transition. Second, I argue that, among the three elements, the TR should play the most central role in the definition of trauma. My aim is to support definitions of psychological trauma that focus on the TR, as I contend that they offer greater explanatory power—particularly with respect to the anomalies that challenge the strong causal view—and are more firmly centred on the experience of survivors.
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Memory and Perception in the Autobiographical Interview: An Episodic Simulation Adapting in Real Time to Context (in Spanish)
(2021). Revista de HumanidaEstud.filos no.64. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ef.n64a02
(In Spanish) Perception and memory are usually thought to be two independent faculties, where the former is believed to only have an influence on the latter at encoding. In autobiographical interviews of oral history and historical memory, interviewees select, adapt, and complete their memories to create different versions. This paper argues that this process is a consequence of the simulative nature of episodic memory and the interviewees’ use of perceptual information to generate and adapt their memories to an autobiographical discourse with the goal of satisfying a communicative purpose. To illustrate this, three contextual factors (communicative aim, language of communication, and emotional interaction) that influence the construction of a memory in an autobiographical interview are analysed, showing that, in this type of recall, memory and perception simultaneously contribute to constructing episodic simulations of events, which adapt in real-time to the context in which recall happens.
Mestizaje at Tepeyac and the Discursive Construction of a Hierophany at the Beginning of the Postcolonial Awakening (in Spanish)
(2013).Espaço E Cultura, n. 34, Julho-Dezembro
This article analyses the phenomenon of cultural mestizaje surrounding the creation of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It argues that the resignification of the hill of Tepeyac—where Tonantzin was originally worshipped—constitutes an event of meaning-making that emerges within the context of mestizaje and involves the discursive construction of a hierophany organised around three elements: the sacred object, the site of worship, and the ritual of veneration. This event was of great significance, as Guadalupanism generated a series of feelings of belonging among both criollos and Indigenous peoples, who found in it a way of understanding themselves as distinct from the Spanish Empire. For many authors, this process represented one of the earliest seeds of independence ideals and the overcoming of the colonial period.
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The Ideological Impact of the French School on the Argentine Army (in Spanish)
(2011) Persona y Sociedad, Vol. 25 Núm. 2. https://doi.org/10.53689/pys.v25i2.214
In Argentina, there was a powerful influence of French origin that profoundly transformed the military tactics and ideology of the Army between 1957 and 1963. These foreign theories, imported into the Southern Cone, originated in the lessons learned by the French Army during the wars in Algeria and Indochina. Drawing on these experiences, French officers developed combat techniques aimed at countering the then novel form of “guerrilla warfare” employed by rebel groups, which were later taught to Argentine military personnel. This training included significant doctrinal elements, such as the idea of a global war against communism, the notion of the internal enemy, and the conviction that their actions—including the use of torture as a technique for obtaining information—were justified by the pursuit of the nation’s greater good. This ideology deeply influenced the Argentine Army, and its traces can be identified in the radical conduct of the military forces during the National Reorganisation Process.
Edited Volumes
Memories from the South: Reflections and Proposals by Young Researchers on Memory Processes in Colombia and Argentina. (in Spanish)
(2013). Argentina: Ceraunia – National University of La Plata (UNLP)
The authors who contribute to this volume write from a frontier position, which endows the work with a multiple and creative character. This book emerged with the aim of presenting the work and proposals of a group of young researchers from various countries who have found in Argentina both a point of geographical convergence and a place to develop their research interests. Coming from sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, and communication studies, they engage with memory studies using the analytical tools of this field, enriched by the perspectives and methodologies of their original disciplines. The result is a work that, by virtue of both its unity and its diversity, is more than a mere compilation of articles: it is a collective creation whose central backbone and guiding axis become evident throughout the entire volume.
Chapters
Remembering Is Constructing: The Creative Character of Remembering in the Autobiographical Interview (In Spanish)
(2025). Historia Oral: sujetos y memorias (16-25)
(In Spanish) Human memory, far from being a faithful record of the past, is characterised by its dynamic and constructive nature. This aspect is particularly evident in autobiographical interviews, where individuals not only recall past experiences but also actively supplement, shape, and reinterpret them, giving rise to what has been termed “the creative character of remembering.” This character raises crucial questions about the very nature of memory and about the construction of personal and collective narratives of the past. Despite being a common phenomenon, it has not been sufficiently explored to provide a comprehensive explanation of its origins and its effects on autobiographical narratives. In this article, I explore the creative character of memory in the context of autobiographical interviews, analysing its causes and the factors that influence it. I will address the hypothesis of constructive episodic simulation as an explanatory perspective that sheds light on memory’s capacity to reconstruct the past through imagination. Finally, I will examine the contextual influences that shape memory during the interview, with a focus on the role of dialogical interaction and the perceptual factors that mould autobiographical narratives.
Prologue: Elucidation of Hegel’s Aesthetics (in Spanish)
(2013). Dilucidación de la Estética de Hegel. Una introducción a sus conceptos estéticos
Majestic, intrepid, and overwhelming; before the beating of the timpani completely ceased, and the cry of the horn faded away, and the breath of the voices was extinguished, and the vibration of the strings wore out, and the enchantment of the clarinet broke, and the beautiful lament of the flutes died away; before the sound of the orchestra finished dancing, beautiful and irreverent, among the audience who witnessed the miracle of that night in May 1824 at the Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna; before the crowd, intoxicated by beauty, erupted in applause for that German composer, so deaf that…