Memoryscapes of Disappearance in Mexico

Reviews / Votes

"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 Delano 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 depoliticisation 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