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8 Death and dismemberment: the body and counter-revolutionary warfare in apartheid South Africa 1 Nicky Rousseau As resistance intensified in what would turn out to be apartheid’s final decade, security forces in South Africa began covertly to execute opponents extra-judicially, despite a formidable arsenal of security legislation and a state of emergency from 1985 to 1990.2 A noteworthy aspect of these executions is that the modes of killing varied, sometimes along regional lines, or according to the particular security unit involved. Disposal of the bodies
who-is-the-victim discussion and address a question that is perhaps even more fundamental and goes beyond the idiosyncrasies of the US (often taken as a reference point in policing studies; see Introduction of this volume): who are the police for? This matter requires much more scholarly attention, as it ultimately boils down to the question of whether the police can be a security
Eastern Ukraine. After that, both neighbouring countries introduced new restrictions and regulations which have affected border-crossing and made it more unpredictable. This development has been paralleled by the desire for statist security and increasing militarist nationalism. In our view, ethnosexual desires on the border and the ethnosexual frontier have been overshadowed by those developments. The
the Argentine state in most known cases. Soldiers, members of the security forces (police officers, gendarmes, municipal prison staff, and National Prison Service personnel), and civilians were organized to kidnap, torture, murder, and pillage, and to destroy and/or hide the corpses of an as yet indeterminate number of people accused of belonging to ‘the subversion’. In the terminology used at the time, this was the ‘war on subversion’. The military junta remained in power until 1983, when demo cratic elections were held. Between 1984 and 1985, an investigation
science and criminology. As the contributions to this volume show, the corpse is not always the end of the story. On the contrary, as we shall see, a corpse still holds the power to stir up more death. The overall argument is that the brutal treatment of corpses transgresses the spheres of national security politics and the simple spread of terror. Corpses are instead seen as a social force that enchants politics and socialises religion. They make the past present 164 Regnar Kristensen and foresee possible futures. Drawing on popular Catholic practices I stumbled
other so called feudal practices – such as the open-air funeral – were prohibited (see Farkas 1992). As in other parts of Mongolia, the Duha remember socialism generally as a time of ‘prosperity, stability and security’ (Pedersen 2011: 48), as it marked a jump from a life of severe poverty and insecurity7 to a life with the material surplus and social security of the socialist state. However, citizenship also forced the Duha to adopt a new way of life, where modern/socialist ideologies, laws, practices and consumer goods were introduced and mixed in new ways. This
, either by being silent or singing. There is no space for speaking there. In the meantime, participation in social clubs and other free-time activities is very low, while the weekly working hours in Latvia are among the longest in Europe. Two-thirds of all Latvians do not participate in any free-time collective activities, social or hobby groups (Ījabs 2017). Thus, the therapeutic circles and the exchanges during the seminars provided an unexpected but welcome form of care and conviviality. They were a form of ‘local production of social security’ (Read and Thelen 2007
was beautiful there; we were living in grace that nobody knows about it but God. By the way, we used to say [before becoming refugees in Jordan]: ‘May God be with the Jordanian people’ [because they are facing so much hardship]”; “my life was on a high level: I could afford anything.” They often made comparisons with their current lives and mentioned having no social or financial security
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays, each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.
which was paid was to prevent reporting me. They [the hospital staff] had instructions to report to the security, police, or army about any injured person admitted there. There was another amount of money [paid] for the medical care. The two amounts were equal to each other