A conversation between CVC visiting research fellow Sebastián Eduardo Dávila and Silvia Posocco, moderated by Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra.

Centring on what Diane Nelson calls the “ends of war” as an everlasting process in Guatemala, our conversation explores how war and the genocide permeate subjects and relationships, landscapes and archives. We examine research and artistic practices that expand, resist, or mourn violence in the aftermath of war—whether through scientific approaches aimed at producing rational knowledge, such as DNA analysis and inventories, or through sensory, emotional, and embodied modes like performance art and poetry. Local communities, activists, NGO staff, civil servants, artists, and poets undertake the impossible task of making sense of war, seeking to recover or reassemble what has been lost.

While focusing on specific cases drawn from our respective research trajectories, we will critically engage with how research subjects are produced in acts of tracing and through ‘methodologies of the trace’ in our respective disciplines, making our conversation an exploration of method as well.

Diane M. Nelson, Reckoning. The Ends of War in Guatemala (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2019).