Only God Knows: Missing Bodies and the Semiotics of Family Movement Protests in Libya

• In Event: 318 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. The Body Politic: Law, Nationalism, and the State

Abstract

This paper examines the centrality of the visual in the space of protest and in demands made of the state by families of the disappeared in Libya. Drawing on Arendt’s insights in The Origins of Totalitarianism, I argue that regimes extra-judicially incarcerate and disappear bodies to make “death itself anonymous.” The absence of a corpse renders implausible culpability for a crime and ensures the invisibility of state violence. These disappearances, however, are not accepted without response. To demonstrate reactions to state erasure of life, I consider the case of a movement among families in Libya that mobilized visuals to confront state violence. From 2009-2010, families of the victims of a 1996 prison massacre demonstrated weekly outside the Benghazi courthouse to demand knowledge of the whereabouts of their loved ones’ bodies. Mothers, in particular, utilized visuals, including photographs of their sons, to preserve memories the Libyan state denied. Women invoked visuals in two ways: to offer alternative narratives about the lives of their families and to demand of the government photographs of their relatives’ bodies to affirm their deaths. This project also emphasizes the significance of the visual methodologically through an analysis of YouTube videos of the protest filmed prior to the recent regime collapse. In this case, the visual resurrects the lives of political dissidents anew despite the absence (and state non-recognition) of their bodies. This analysis has implications for other contexts, especially in Latin America, where disappearance has been an integral strategy of state repression.

Author

• Amina Zarrugh, University of Texas-Austin