@article{THESIS,
      recid = {1637},
      author = {Rubin, Jonah S.},
      title = {"They Are Not Just Bodies": Memory, Death, and Democracy  in post-Franco Spain},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2016-06},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {357},
      abstract = {“They Are Not Just Bodies”: Memory, Death, and Democracy  in post-Franco Spain, is an ethnography of a social  movement dedicated to exhuming the over 130,000 civilians  killed during the Spanish Civil War and buried in mass  graves throughout the country. The “historical memory  movement” – as this loose coalition of victims’ relatives,  forensic scientists, volunteers, and political allies is  collectively known – is united not only in their commitment  to returning the physical remains of the disappeared to  their kin for a proper burial, but also by the common  conviction that recovering these deceased persons is  essential for building a proper democracy in the  21st-Century. Based on over 19 months of multi-sited  fieldwork throughout Castilian Spain, my manuscript shows  how Spanish civil society organizations repurpose the  forensic technologies that rose to prominence in Latin  America’s state-led democratic transitions in order to  critique their own country for its unwillingness to locate  the disappeared. 

However, because Spanish exhumations  lack a legal mandate, I argue that they do far more than  produce evidence about past crimes. In post-Franco Spain,  they become forensic rituals, by which the disappeared are  transformed into dead persons, capable of exerting  compelling claims on their compatriots and political  communities. As previous scholarship on the increasing  prominence of dead bodies in political transitions would  suggest, Franco’s victims undergo a number of changes as  their often unruly biographies and decomposing remains are  disciplined into the sorts of beings with whom contemporary  Spaniards can identify. But in contrast to prevailing  accounts within post-conflict studies, I demonstrate that  the dead are not just passive fetish objects, upon which  the living project their own political aspirations. Through  careful attention to the experiences of Spaniards at mass  grave exhumations, public protests, educational events, and  beyond, I demonstrate how the properly disciplined victims  of Franco acquire the capacity to suggest, compel, and  sometimes even demand action from their living compatriots.  

Mass grave exhumations are thus transformative processes  not only for those being disinterred, but also for those  observing these processes, who likewise undergo dramatic  somatic, affective, and political shifts through their  encounters these face-to-skull encounters. When successful,  these forensic interventions yield not only new facts about  the past, but more importantly new alliances between living  and dead persons. Together, the counterpublics they form  across the mortal divide can put forth radical democratic  agendas that neither party could effectively advance in  isolation. Form the production of authoritative narratives  of past violence, to training citizens to inhabit a  democratic subjectivity, and including the formation of  compelling demands in the broader public sphere, this  dissertation demonstrates how the historical memory  movement fosters collaborations between living and dead  persons. 

Ultimately, Spanish forensic interventions are  not only a technique for reckoning with narratives about  the past, nor only a form of embodied knowledge and  identity. In addition, I suggest, these processes are best  understood as a method for dis-membering the lingering  influence of the fascist state and re-membering a more  responsive democratic future. In post-Franco Spain, I argue  that historical memory is an ontogenetic, world-making  practice, which heralds not only the emergence of new  actors, but possibly also a new political future for  Spain.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1637},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1637},
}