In Search of Return: Mourning the Disappearances in Kashmir

Shifa Haq examines mourning marked by the travail of waiting in the context of disappearances. Beginning in 1989, more than 8,000 men disappeared in Kashmir, leaving a gaping void in personal and cultural imagination on how to mourn a loss denied widely. Drawn from ten years of engagement-- through interviews, observation and witnessing--with the mourners of the disappeared persons in Kashmir, In Search of Return reflects on intricate experiences of mourning as they attempt to elaborate the meaning of disappearance, militarization and ethics of mourning. Beyond psychoanalytic understanding of success and failure to mourn, Haq argues for a new consideration on mourning to include porous, affective links with the political as ethical aim of mourning.