“Return practices” in cases of human disappearance: materializing the absence

Abstract

In human disappearance cases a wide range of practices are implemented, they build a sequence of "tracking, search, location and identification" (here call "return practices"). Searching disappearances must consider also attending to the return practices and who initiates them. What remains after the disappearance are the memories, the emotions, the claims, the demands and the duels; but also all that materially and sensitively than persists. When expert knowledge is used to achieve the goals of final return, the disappeared is legitimized through scientific-juridical expertise. Here the disappearance is materialized in its most biotechnological form. The disappearance has been redefined as the product of an incursion of various experts, to which all the others have been subjugated.