Ayotzinapa

Abstract

Abstract This article offers an analysis of some of the reasons why the unveiling of the truth in the Ayotzinapa case, in which forty-three students enrolled in a rural teaching school in Mexico were forcibly taken and then disappeared, must not be postponed. To make a strong case for mourning as a political right, the article first analyzes Hannah Arendt's argument according to which only forgiveness can change a violent course of action, but in order for forgiveness to be offered, the crime to be pardoned must be precisely named. The article then shows how Judith Butler's politics of mourning crosses paths with Arendt's valorization of truth in politics, because both argue for the centrality of reality testing in mourning. In order to add to Butler's account of collective mourning, the article concludes by returning to Freud's psychoanalytic account of the work of mourning, where factual truth proves indispensable to the construction of any history.