Working with absent presences: Disappearances and materiality in post-war Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper is about affective potencies of materiality that aid grieving war-related disappearances in post-war Sri Lanka. Based on ethnographic narratives of those who have lost someone to disappearance during the 1983–2009 civil war, the paper questions the nonrepresentationality of traumatic grief and problems with established processes and practices of grieving in cases of disappearances. It also elucidates how survivor's affective experiences of grief are ever-evolving, both subjective and objective, personal and political. The paper explores the polymorphous and potentiating nature of materiality as a means to address otherwise non-representational and ever-evolving grief, highlighting how materiality assists grieving the disappeared specifically by bringing the missing to the forefront.