Keep the Bones Alive

Every year at least 20,000 people go missing in São Paulo, Brazil. Many will be found, sometimes in mundane mass graves, but thousands will not. Keep the Bones Alive explores this phenomenon and why there is little concern for those who vanish. Ethnographer Graham Denyer Willis works beside family members, state workers, and gravediggers to examine the rationalization behind why bodies are missing in space—from cemeteries, the criminal coroner's office, prisons, and elsewhere. By accompanying the bereaved as they confront an indifferent state and a suspicious society and search for loved ones against all odds, this gripping book reveals where missing bodies go and the reasons why people can disappear without being pursued. Recognizing that disappearance has long been central to Brazil's everyday political order, this humanistic account of the silences surrounding disappearance shows why a demand for a politics of life is needed now more than ever.
 

Graham Denyer Willis is Associate Professor in Development Studies and Latin American Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Queens’ College.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Gone
1 Disappearance and the Search
2 Keep the Bones Alive
3 Unearthing Life
4 Disappearance and the Cemetery
5 The Usefulness of Capricious Knowledge 
6 The Disappearable Subject
7 From Disappearance, Presence 
8 Muted Martyrdom 
9 Make Live, Make Disappear 
10 “I Just Want to Live” 

Appendix. Reading Life through Disappearance:
A Note on Method

Notes
References
Index