Memory as experience in times of perpetual violence: the challenge of Saturday Mothers vis-à-vis cultural aphasia

Abstract

The 1990s saw major developments within the Kurdish movement in Turkey, both politically and militarily. The Turkish state responded with a new repertoire of violence, characterized by irregular warfare methods. This article situates the phenomenon of enforced disappearance, employed by the state as part of its asymmetric strategy, within the broader context of memory space and everyday experience. For this, I follow the trajectory of the sittings of Saturday Mothers as performances, focusing on the case of Cizre. First, the phenomenon of enforced disappearance is situated within the historical background of the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s. Then, the Cizre and Istanbul Saturday Mothers’ sittings are compared in terms of memory making and the politico-symbolic sites they produce scrutinized as memory knots (nœuds de mémoire), tying the past to present and personal to political. Finally, I endorse the introduction of a novel term, cultural aphasia, to broaden and deepen the memory debate. Thus, through a focus on human and social relations, emotions and experiences, forms of state violence are revealed as continuously reproducing specific political subjectivities and struggles in everyday life.