The Necropolitics of Memory in Transitions: A Proposed Framework

This paper sets out for discussion a proposed framework for understanding forced disappearance, bringing together scholarship on necropolitical theories, transitional justice, and ‘from below' perspectives. After an overview of the key debates in each of these, it suggests that by combining insights from these three bodies of research we can illuminate the interrelated dimensions of what we term the ‘necropolitics of memory’. Providing brief examples from case studies from Colombia, the paper explores how the concept of necropolitics encapsulates the ways in which individuals in positions of political power and state governance assert control over matters of life and death, often infringing upon human dignity, and often imposing slow and structural violence. In particular, the case studies will reveal how grassroots memory practices in Colombia often work to highlight the implication of the state itself in the perpetration of violence – both direct, individual acts of violence, and structural or slow violence. We thus argue that such memory practices can be understood as forms of critiquing the necropolitics of the state, and, ultimately, of advocating for a transformative as much as a transitional justice.

As a form of conclusion, the paper suggests that such a framework – the necropolitics of memory - could be employed to interrogate other, similar situations in other countries undergoing processes of transitional justice.