Recognition and Emotion. Exhumations of Missing Persons in Cyprus

Sant Cassia, P.

Abstract

In this chapter I discuss the attempts by some widows of missing persons in Cyprus to recover the remains of their loved ones and give them a proper burial. My aims are threefold. First, I show that although the issue of missing persons in Cyprus is highly politicized, relatives have different and conflicting needs to the agendas of the nation-state. Their attempts to recover what was lost is not "merely" a necessary simulation by their political representatives,; but they are essential for psychic stability. Second, I show that mourning is more than either ritual or emotion, and that it encompasses fundamental cognitive, existential, and identity changes, along the lines hinted at by Pirandello. Finally, I suggest that we should be cautious in about either genderizing emotion or as viewing it as a resistant margin (e.g., Seremetakis 1991). Rather, I suggest that every political order requires its own specific representations of suffering. Emotion and suffering therefore both subverts and sustains the social order.

Citation

Sant Cassia, P. (2006). Recognition and Emotion. Exhumations of Missing Persons in Cyprus. In Y. Papadakis, N. Peristianis, & G. Welz (Eds.), Divided Cyprus : modernity, history and an island in conflict (194-213). Indiana University Press

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006
• Deposit Date: Jun 5, 2007
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Pages: 194-213
• Series Title: New anthropologies of Europe
• Book Title: Divided Cyprus : modernity, history and an island in conflict.
• Chapter Number: 10
• ISBN: 02533475133
• Keywords: Mourning, Ritual, Emotion, Recognition, Revelation.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1692778
• Publisher URL: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22798
• Additional Information: Series title: New Anthropologies of Europe.