Desaparecidos vivos: Absence, Invisibility and Bad Life

Date
-
Event Sponsor
Center for Latin American Studies
Location
Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row, Stanford, CA
Desaparecidos vivos: Absence, Invisibility and Bad Life

Desaparecidos vivos: Absence, Invisibility and Bad Life

The category of "desaparecid@" is increasingly expanding, not because it's ineffective but because it has grown to characterize and describe more and more: precarious lives, invisible subjects, nonpersons, and the living dead... they all fall into this category. And it’s all happening in “the streets", forcing those of us in academia to rethink the concept. Currently, the disappeared are no longer just those who fall under the legal category of "forced disappearance of persons", nor are they just dead ("bad death"), nor mere subjects of political repression. From a work still in progress (http://victimas.identidadcolectiva.es), we will revise the categories of "desaparecido" and "desaparición (disappearance)" and place them in contrast with what has been found in different contexts of investigation, fundamentally in Latin America, where it seems to be a useful instrument to understand the "bad life."

Los desaparecidos vivos. Inexistencia, invisibilidad y mala vida

La categoría de desaparecido está cada vez más desbordada, no porque no funcione sino porque cada vez califica y describe más: vidas precarias, sujetos invisibles, no sujetos, muertos en vida… Y sucede en “las calles”, forzándonos a los que habitamos la academia a repensar el concepto. Ahora, los desaparecidos ya no son solamente los de la “desaparición forzada de personas” que describe la ley, ni son solo muertos ("malos muertos"), ni son solo sujetos objeto de represión política. A partir de un trabajo aun en marcha, se intentará revisar la categoría de “desaparición” y ponerla en tensión con lo encontrado en distintos contextos de investigación, fundamentalmente latinoamericanos, en donde parece poder ser un instrumento útil para entender la “mala vida”.

Gabriel Gatti is a professor of sociology at the University of the Basque Country (Euskal Herriko Unibertistatea) in Bilbao, Spain. He is a member of the Centro de Estudios sobre la Identidad Colectiva (CEIC), and coordinator since 2013 of the research program “Mundo(s) de víctimas”, within which he has directed the projects "Mundo(s) de víctimas. He will be teaching the course ILAC 258: Narratives at the Edge of Life during the Winter 2020 quarter.

*This lecture will be in Spanish. 

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED.