Sketching an involved anthropolgy by the side of victims of “forced disappearance”
The « forced disappearance » in Argentina questions the capacity of anthropology to approach violence and its unspeakable elements. Before entering such a minefield it is necessary to examine our own internal feelings. Our ethnographical position is made up of changeable feelings of empathy, involvement and detachment and questions the relationship of sense in the society which surrounds and forms us, while at the same time experimenting with that same society’s capacity for self-destruction. In this article I intend to examine what I consider to be the possible doble involvement of the researchers: the reconstruction of sense and the rebuilding of relationships. Confronted by ‘social death’ the anthropologist may participate in a social dynamic of recognition (as a reconstruction of a social and political link resulting from a reciprocal relationship). Taking part in this dynamic means that its ethical and political implications are also called into question. Faced with denial, with the depersonalization and elimination of the other, we need to follow the way of individualization, of intimity. It indeedy reminds us that crimes against humanity were first perpetrated against that which is most intimate. This anthropological approach, involved by the side of victims of “disappearance”, and developed in conjunction with them, is experienced as a rebirth of sense, as a journey which leads us from wounded intimacy towards history and collective memory (D. Fassin, F. Laplantine, C. Coquio). In short, I’m trying to transmit the intimate to make possible thinking terror.