Why “Disappearance” Matters
The concept of enforced disappearance came to prominence largely through the experiences of Latin American dictatorships, where State agents carried out arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings. In international law, enforced disappearance is recognized as a grave human rights violation, prompting the emergence of memory studies and testimonial genres that seek to document and contest these crimes. Scholars have noted how fictional works in world literature engage with related themes—such as doubling, prosopopoeia, and spectrality—as literary reflections of State terror.
Recent scholarship, however, highlights the shifting relationship between State violence and disappearance. In response, alternative frameworks—e.g., social disappearance, mundane disappearance, and neoliberal disappearance—foreground how non-State actors drive the majority of disappearances today. Thus, multiple forms of disappearance have given rise to increasingly diverse modes of expression, narration, and justice-seeking. For example, several poets in North America center Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW); prize-winning novels in Ireland, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka focus on internal armed conflict and disappearance; Palestinian literature engages with disappearance as a legal and literary device; and nonfiction narratives turn to the rubric of disappearance to account for African migrants lost in the Mediterranean. The urgency around these global contexts shapes this symposium, as we strive to expand conversations about these critical texts, issues, and forms of collective engagement.
Event Highlights
Legal Perspectives: We are honored to welcome Delia Caicedo from Fundación Guagua (Cali, Colombia), who will lead a workshop on documenting cases of disappearance and human rights abuses in southwestern Colombia. Further, members from Colombia’s Unidad de búsqueda de personas dadas por desaparecidas will join eminent scholars and practitioners of international law to discuss the search for the missing and the shifting relationship between (enforced) disappearance and non-State actors.
Artivist Perspectives and Pop-Up Exhibits: In collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies and Adan Griego of Stanford Libraries, the event includes a pop-up exhibit featuring artivism by women searching for disappeared persons who have worked with Fundación Guagua. This will be complemented by a pop-up exhibit at Stanford’s Green Library, showcasing materials held in the university’s Special Collections from Ester Hernandez (Libertad, Tejido de desaparecidos, and Sun Mad Raisin) and Derli Romero (Rostros Migrantes and Mujeres en tránsito). In fact, Romero will join the event virtually to discuss his artivist practice.
Film and Disappearance: Rodrigo Reyes, director of the docudrama 499, will join Martha González, a Mexican woman who recounts the search for her disappeared son in Reyes’ film, in a conversation curated by Stanford professor Ximena Briceño.
Interdisciplinary Presentations: Scholars will examine disappearance in philosophy, literature, law, anthropology, sociology, and history. This includes a talk by philosopher Ege Selin Islekel who connects Latin American and Turkish approaches to combating disappearance, philosopher Hershini Young, literary scholar Peter Leman, and anthropologist Promise Ejiofor.
NB: Hybrid Format: Most activities will be accessible in person and online, ensuring broad participation and collaboration.
Contact
If you have questions about the event or would like more details regarding co-sponsorship or participation, please reach out to Joseph Wager (jbwager@stanford.edu).