{"title":"Uncertainty as Statecraft: Family Movements Contesting Disappearance","authors":"Amina Zarrugh","doi":"10.1353/wsq.2023.0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:State violence, particularly in the form of enforced disappearance, is designed to terrorize publics and quell organized forms of dissent. Most fundamentally, however, disappearance as a form of violence operates to disrupt family and kin-based bonds. In this article, I outline how family has emerged as a mobilizing framework to contest enforced disappearance, driven largely in response to how states produce a pervasive sense of uncertainty and liminality for women and their families living in the aftermath of a relative's disappearance. Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature that foregrounds Butler's (2006) notion of \"grievability,\" I detail how the effects of disappearance lay the groundwork for social movements to mobilize under the rubric of family to dispute state-based assertions that the disappeared are \"unmournable.\" Family-based social movements against disappearance highlight the contradictions between the valorized position of \"family\" in many state ideologies and the disruptions to families wrought by state violence.","PeriodicalId":23857,"journal":{"name":"Wsq: Women's Studies Quarterly","volume":"17 1","pages":"115 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Wsq: Women's Studies Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2023.0005","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:State violence, particularly in the form of enforced disappearance, is designed to terrorize publics and quell organized forms of dissent. Most fundamentally, however, disappearance as a form of violence operates to disrupt family and kin-based bonds. In this article, I outline how family has emerged as a mobilizing framework to contest enforced disappearance, driven largely in response to how states produce a pervasive sense of uncertainty and liminality for women and their families living in the aftermath of a relative's disappearance. Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature that foregrounds Butler's (2006) notion of "grievability," I detail how the effects of disappearance lay the groundwork for social movements to mobilize under the rubric of family to dispute state-based assertions that the disappeared are "unmournable." Family-based social movements against disappearance highlight the contradictions between the valorized position of "family" in many state ideologies and the disruptions to families wrought by state violence.