The Politics of Disappearance

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Disappearance has a long and difficult history in Latin America. Slaves, political dissidents, migrants, the indigenous and the urban poor (and many others) have been subjects of disappearance. But disappearance cannot be situated only in historical context, nor in passive tense. The ongoing history of disappearance draws attention to how it is used as a technique of rule, whether carried out by the state or through its omission. Alongside police violence, para-state militias and organised crime, the threat and impact of disappearance has become an unavoidable lived experience, with multiplying effects, around the region. To examine how this matters, this panel focusses on Brazil in historical, contemporary and urban context, bringing together research on the archeology of disinterment, the disappearance and search for young black men, the escalation in clandestine cemeteries and the politics of dead bodies.

Sub Track

• Violence and Insecurities

Session Organizer

• Graham Denyer Willis, University of Cambridge

Chair

• Sabrina Villenave

Discussant

• Leigh A Payne, University of Oxford

Individual Presentations

• Bureaucracy and Disappearance: An Archaeological Perspective on the Footprints of Dictatorship in the Present - Marcia L Hattori, Institute of Heritage Sciences - Spanish National Research Council

• Contemporary De-politicisation of Disappearances - Sabrina Villenave

• Forced Disappearance and Maternal Activism in the Baixada Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro - Amy Jaffa

• Politics Gone Missing - Graham Denyer Willis, University of Cambridge

• Violence, Politics and Social Death - Flavia M Santos