Recognition and Emotion. Exhumations of Missing Persons in Cyprus

Sant Cassia, P.

Recognition and Emotion. Exhumations of Missing Persons in Cyprus

Sant Cassia, P.

Authors

P. Sant Cassia

Contributors

Yiannis Papadakis
Editor

Nicos Peristianis
Editor

Gisela Welz
Editor

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.
Publisher URL	http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=22798
Additional Information	Series title: New Anthropologies of Europe.