ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the first site of such re-turning which is the 2009-11 trial of 18 members of the Navy for crimes committed at the clandestine detention centre Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA). The trial, known as the ESMA megacausa, is explored as a 'theatre of justice' in Soshana Felman's sense, displaying as it did the paradox faced by transitional justice mechanisms that need to assert legal norms as a basis for a sustainable future relation between State and people through forums that require a return to the past experience of State violence. The chapter moves beyond the courtroom to a second site at which the past is returned, and consider the activities that are taking place at the ESMA building itself, which, having survived Menem's proposal to demolish it, has now become an important 'Space of Memory' in the city of Buenos Aires.
