X-Message-Number: 33087 From: David Stodolsky <> Subject: Governing the Dead Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:53:50 +0100 http://www.diis.dk/sw102152.asp Within international studies, the dead would seem to make up an exotic but marginal subject of research and policy analysis. So much of international relations deal with how to ensure survival, peace, cooperation, and development; and yet, dead bodies have a significant but rarely recognized presence in national and international politics. One thing is the exceptional cases of soldiers retuning in body bags, disaster victims being buried in mass graves, suicide bombers blowing themselves to pieces, and unaccounted for dead civilians in counterinsurgency campaigns. But another thing is the significance of death in everyday lives, where state and international regulations of dead bodies provide a silent but indispensable precondition for senses of order. Moreover, dead bodies and human remains often play important roles in the making and transformation of political communities, surfacing again and again through memorials, exhumations, repatriations, and reburials in times of political turmoil. At this seminar, John Borneman will speak about the political significance of the bodies of dead leaders, while Antonius Robben will talk about the political role of exhumations of disappeared victims of the dirty war in Argentina. The seminar is organized as part of an international workshop "Shifting Power and Sovereignty and a PhD course. John Borneman is professor of anthropology at Princeton University where he works in fields of the political and legal anthropology, including issues of authority, memory and secularism. His extensive list of publications includes among many other titles the booksSettling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist States (Princeton University Press, 1997) and Death of the Father: Toward an Anthropology of the End in Political Authority (Berghahn Books, 2003). Antonius Robben is professor of anthropology at Utrecht University, working on medical, psychological and political anthropology and with special interest in political violence, trauma and social reconstruction. His books include the edited volume Survival and Cultures Under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Death, Mourning and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), and Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). David Stodolsky Skype: davidstodolsky Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33087