Citation

Dossa P. Med. Anthropol. 2013; 32(5): 433-447.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/01459740.2012.721826

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Afghanistan has been subject to political amnesia by the occupying powers of the United States and its NATO allies. Using the Taliban as a reference point, they have ensured that they are not implicated in the everyday and structural violence to which the people of Afghanistan have been subject over the last three decades. But Afghan women remember. Based on my ethnographic research in Kabul (in Fall, 2008 and 2009), I show how women in Afghanistan engage in memory work through narratives and food preparation within spaces of devastation. I argue that through these mediums, structural violence becomes knowable. I also argue that memory work is a politicized enterprise through which people remember to seek justice, in the process evoking the attention of a listening audience. This focus raises questions on how the anthropology of violence can engage with issues of representation and engaged accountability.