Flashes of the past: the inscription of death in public space through the exhumation of the bodies of missing political militants of the Brazilian military dictatorship

Abstract

By ethnography and interviews, this project intends to investigate forms of inscribing death in public space, focusing on the discovery of a clandestine grave containing the remains of missing political activists of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship period (1964-1985), in the Vila Formosa cemetery, in the capital city of São Paulo, in 2010.The goal is to understand how efforts to identify bodies and clarify causes and circumstances of death are linked to processes of mourning of relatives and to consolidation of democracy in Brazil. In this respect, the manner in which the idea of "passage rite" has been used to interpret such efforts of clarification, by social organizations devoted to the defense of human rights (such as the Comissão de Familiares dos Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos and the Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais), deserves attention. Indeed, for these groups, the experience of passing through such a process of investigation is a necessary condition for "building Brazilian democracy".This research project also intends to investigate how various terms - such as "mourning", "reconstruction of historic memory" and "passage rites" - are mobilized by these social actors, while considering social and political context. From this perspective, the question of "building Brazilian democracy" will be discussed (AU)