Celebrating Absentees, Remembering the Disappeared. Commemorating the November 1973 Student Revolt in Athens

This article examines the case of the disappeared, absentees who have left no trace, nor identity, nor place or date of their disappearance. How to keep alive the memory of those who are no longer here, but are neither absent nor present, driven into a limbo of some sort? It examines the modes of such remembrance in the context of fragmented memories, shaped by protests and political controversies, by revisiting Heller-Roazen’s analysis of absentees as non-persons, or Outis, No-One. It proposes a new reading of the commemorations of victims of state violence by focusing on the annual celebrations of the Athenian students’ revolt of 1973, where narratives and rituals of remembrance include elements from the funerary ritual tradition of the Greek Orthodox church.