Guarding Each Other's Dead, Mourning One's Own: The Problem of Missing Persons and Missing Pasts in Cyprus

Abstract

This article tackles the problematic notions of ‘difference’ (and ‘similarity’) between Greek and Turkish Cypriots with special reference to their perceptions of their Missing Persons - persons who disappeared in the course of hostilities between the two groups, and as a result of the 1974 Turkish invasion, and whose bodies have not been recovered. The article borrows Derrida’s notion of differance who suggested that at the heart of existence is not “essence”, but an operation of differance: difference is more than just socially produced. Differance ontologically makes the world social. If this is accepted, then two conclusions follow: first, we need to problematise difference, rather than nationalising and naturalising it. Second, the State is part of the phenomenon of the generation of differences rather than a rationalisation or resolution of them. It concludes by exploring how Missing Persons have become metaphors of differance between the two groups.