Please register for The Disappeared of History, a conversation with Brad Evans & Chantal Meza. Please note that this event is open only to Harvard Affiliates and Harvard IDs will be requested at the door.

How are we to bear witness to those who leave no trace? What role can politics, philosophy and art play when dealing with violence so extreme it takes us beyond all intelligible limits? And how might we recover something of the human in the face of its total annihilation? This collaborative talk will speak directly to the disappeared of history. Drawing upon our critical and artistic interventions from the State of Disappearance project, we will seek to explore the role witnessing, including the transgressive witnessing of art and how this allows for a rethinking of the political. In doing so, the talk will also provide further reflections on the ways disappearance demands considered ethical consideration on the role of perpetrators, victims, and witnesses, along with accounting for the multiple ways bodies can vanish from the surfaces of human belonging.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Brad Evans is Professor of Political Violence & Aesthetics at the University of Bath, UK.

Chantal Meza is an abstract artist whose work focuses on multiple political issues, including human disappearance.

Moderated by Susanna Siegel, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University.