People's
forced disappearance and State violence
Anthropological and psychoanalytical reflections based on the figure of
Antigone
Muriel GILBERT, Dr Psychology, University of Lausanne, Institute of Psychology, 1015 CH-Lausanne
People's forced disappearance, now a common phenomenon that is generating collective traumatisms constitutes a serious attack on human rights. This cruel and barbarian practice, which is regrettably so widespread nowadays, is a privileged instrument of State violence. The present research aims to question the motif of sepulchre - and, conversely, the absence of sepulchre as represented in Sophocle's Antigone - in order to reflect upon forced disappearance from both psychoanalytical and anthropological perspectives. By sacrificing her life in order to provide her brother Polynice with the funeral honours he has been deprived of, Antigone can remind us that the advent of funerary rites and the organised burial of the remains of the deceased marks a crucial step in the process of hominisation. Indeed, the codification of such ritual gestures allows the symbolisation of death and constitutes a distinctive sign of the difference between human beings and animals. The motif of funerary rites may therefore provide contemporary psychoanalytical anthropology with a privileged symbolic paradigm for reflecting upon social bonds more generally. Among other things, such a reflection would aim to counter the - barbarian - threat of the destitution of the symbolic order in contemporary societies.
