Background
Wars are, in essence, corporeal experiences: human bodies take the central place in political struggles; they also carry witness to the consequences of political violence. During wars and violent conflicts, human bodies experience death, displacement, disappearance, torture and other forms of corporeal damage.
Despite the centrality of corporeality to war and conflict, relatively little research has sought to comprehend how human bodies shape interventions and processes that seek to transform violent conflict, such as reconciliation. From a general perspective, scholarship on reconciliation is strongly narrative- and institutions-focused, and has not centered on the embodied consequences of violent conflict. Despite “embodied turns” in diverse disciplines, such as History, Law, Philosophy, Psychology and Politics, little is understood about how corporeal experiences of war influence reconciliation dynamics.
Goal
Our project contends that a paradigm shift is necessary, centering bodies as sources, means and targets of reconciliation, but also as terrains of resistance to reconciliation. In order to push this paradigm shift forward, the project proposes to focus on disappeared bodies, or “the missing”, and their impact on post-war reconciliation processes.
Our core hypothesis is that the embodied impact of egregious intergroup violence shapes reconciliation possibilities after violent conflict, and that the relatives and fellows of people whose bodies disappeared during violent conflict and wars live, face, or resist reconciliation as an embodied process.
Practically, the project is divided into four complementary work packages (WP): WP1 concentrates on the practices of remembering the missing, their timing and spatiality, and how they interact with broader processes of reconciliation; WP2 explores how the positionality of missing bodies can impact processes of reconciliation; WP3 examines how the issue of the missing can disrupt reconciliation models and induce rapprochement between similarly bereaved families; finally, WP4 investigates tensions and hopes generated by institutions dealing with the missing, and what happens when bodies are found.
Our research is guided by the following research questions:
– First, how through which embodied practices, remembrance and rituals do relatives of the disappeared, and their communities, remember them?
– Second, since the embodied experience of war is inherently intersectional, does the absence of some bodies have a different impact on reconciliation processes, depending on their gender, age, occupation, etc.?
– Third, does the issue of the missing disrupt reconciliation processes by impeding communal and/or societal reconciliation, and/or by creating different reconciliation paths?
– Finally, how and why does the work of authorities and experts dealing with the issue of disappeared support or prevent reconciliation?
Impact
The project will help to better understand patterns of post-war reconciliation, and the impact of the issue of the missing in post-war societies.
At the same time, it will significantly contribute, not only to scholarship on reconciliation but also to praxis-oriented peacebuilding. The project will help practitioners understand how the experiences of non-materiality and non-presence of missing bodies affect peace processes at different levels and in very concrete forms.
For peace and human rights activists, the produced knowledge will indicate possibilities for new forms of political mobilization in order to increase the visibility of the disappeared in wars and violent conflicts and support their families. This political mobilization can be empowered by and empowering for women in particular as they are often the closest relatives to the disappeared persons in wars and violent conflicts.
In general, the public visibility of the disappeared is important for raising awareness about the violence that their bodies and the bodies of their relatives suffered, and for public reassurance that such atrocities should never happen again. This is an intersection where academia, civil society and policymakers can come together and jointly engage with peace-oriented memory politics. This can facilitate the process of creating formal and informal commissions to address the issue of the missing in relation to reconciliation.
Finally, while the project focuses on missing bodies, it will contribute to the related research on bodies that are killed, displaced, tortured and maimed during violent conflicts
Funding
The research project is funded by the Research Council of Finland.