Guarding each other's dead, mourning one's own : the problem of missing persons and missing pasts in Cyprus

Abstract

This article tackles the problematic notions of ‘difference’ (and ‘similarity’) between Greek and Turkish Cypriots with special reference to their perceptions of their Missing Persons— persons who disappeared in the course of hostilities between the two groups, and as a result of the 1974 Turkish invasion, and whose bodies have not been recovered. The article borrows Derrida’s notion of diffe ́rance, which suggested that at the heart of existence is not ‘essence’, but an operation of diffe ́rance: difference is more than just socially produced. Diffe ́rance ontologically makes the world social. If this is accepted, then two conclusions follow: first, we need to problematize difference, rather than nationalizing and naturalizing it. Second, the state is part of the phenomenon of the generation of differences rather than a rationalization or resolution of them. The chapter explores how Missing Persons have become metaphors of diffe ́rance between the two groups, and highlights how both groups distinguish themselves from each other.