This book argues for a broadening of the ways memory is conceptualised and practiced. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with artists, relatives, activists, and academics who are engaging in memory practices to fight for justice and search for Mexico's disappeared, it takes a rich empirical approach to explore memory work in depth, foregrounding how people are responding to and articulating their experiences of living with disappearance. Disappearance in its ambiguity is always present, never in the past, and so disrupts many assumptions about how and when to memorisalise traumatic events, and in Mexico disappearance is ongoing, further challenging assumptions of role of memory work and past atrocity. Prioritising the understandings and contradictions of those practicing memory work and foregrounding a politics of space and time in these, builds a sense of the memoryscapes of disappearance in Mexico, going beyond formal or public sites and memorials to spaces and practices not usually recognised as memorialisation.
Moving from the experiences of disappearance in contemporary Mexico to broader questions of societal and political structures, this book is inherently interdisciplinary and has relevance for those studying politics, critical international relations, Latin American studies, the history of human rights, transitional justice, sociology, and anyone with an interest in the issue of disappearance.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Following the traces: methodology Chapter 3: Memorials to the disappeared Chapter 4: Memoryscapes Chapter 5: Bordando por la paz y la memoria Chapter 6: The presence of absence Chapter 7: Huellas de la memoria Chapter 8: The search Chapter 9: The politics of memoryscapes of disappearance Chapter 10: Conclusion
About the Author :
Danielle has worked as a researcher in academic, social policy, and community sectors. She explored her academic interest in the crossover of geography, memory, disappearance, and collaborative research practice in her doctoral research in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, Wales. This formed the basis of this book, her first monograph. Her broader interests span many social issues, including researching and writing on experiences of death and dying, arts-based and creative methods, Latin American politics, planning and regeneration, and public health. She is co-editor of the volume New perspectives on urban deathscapes (Edward Elgar, 2022), and coordinated several UK exhibitions on disappearance and violence in Mexico. She is currently Research Fellow in the Centre for Public Health, University of Bristol, UK.
Review :
"Memoryscapes of Disappearance in Mexico is a timely and necessary account of enforced disappearances in Mexico, and of the everyday experience of living with absence. Danielle House writes with careful ethnographic attention, grounded in sustained relationships with families, activists, and artists engaged in struggles for truth and justice. Rather than treating disappearances and acts of memory as a response to past events, the book shows how absence is lived in the present tense, as an ongoing disruption to social, legal, and temporal orders. Moving beyond dominant frameworks of memorialisation that seek closure or reconciliation, House advances an original methodological approach centred on material practices, objects, and spaces — from textiles and shoes to streets, homes, and public spaces — to demonstrate how memory is experienced, negotiated, and politically generative in conditions of ongoing violence. Memoryscapes of Disappearance in Mexicorepresents a significant and original contribution to scholarship on memory and violence, with implications far beyond the Mexican case."
- Alexandra Délano Alonso, Professor of Politics and Global Studies at The New School
"Centring the struggles for justice and truth of relatives and supporters of Mexico’s disappeared, this carefully written book weaves together insightful explorations of living forms of memory – from anti-monuments to embroidery groups - whose creators refuse the depoliticization and silencing of the forced disappearance of their loved ones. The powerful thread of the presence of absence running through the chapters makes their grief tangible, and yet their resistance also gives hope that different ways of being and caring are possible. This is a necessary reading for anyone interested in a critical approach to memory and justice in violent contexts in Mexico and beyond."
- Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University
