Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Med Anthropol. 2013;32(5):433-47. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2012.721826.
Afghanistan has been subject to political amnesia by the occupying powers of the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization 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 past 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 fosters a conversation on how the anthropology of violence can engage with issues of representation and engaged accountability.
阿富汗一直受到美国及其北大西洋公约组织盟国的占领势力的政治健忘症的影响。他们以塔利班为参照点，确保自己不被牵连到过去三十年来阿富汗人民所遭受的日常和结构性暴力中。但阿富汗妇女记得。基于我在喀布尔（2008 年秋季和 2009 年）的民族志研究，我展示了阿富汗妇女如何通过在废墟空间中的叙述和食物准备来进行记忆工作。我认为，通过这些媒介，结构性暴力变得可以被理解。我还认为，记忆工作是一个政治化的事业，通过这个事业，人们记得要寻求正义，同时引起一个倾听的受众的注意。这种关注促进了关于暴力人类学如何与代表性和参与问责制问题相关联的对话。
