Ege Selin Islekel, "Nightmare Remains: The Politics of Mourning and Epistemologies of Disappearance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
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What is the central argument of *Nightmare Remains* about mourning and politics?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Sarah Tyson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Carrie Fichtor, Robert Talis, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Age Celine Ishlakel, assistant professor of philosophy at Texas AM University. Her book, Nightmare Remains: The Politics of Mourning and Epistemologies of Disappearance, is just out from Northwestern University Press. What does mourning have to do with politics?
How do practices of forced disappearance and improper burial shape subjects, spaces, and what is intelligible? What are people doing in movements across the globe when they gather in public space and recount nightmares of the d of their disappeared loved ones? And nightmare remains. Ishlakel creates a South South dialogue, connecting practices of forced disappearance in Latin America with those in Turkey and the movements of resistance developed by the searchers and remnants. By analyzing methods of power that target death and the afterlives of the dead, Ishlakel shows that the world is but need not be organized by such practices. She shows how people mobilize resistance within the death worlds of necrosovereignty, inventing possibilities from the very stuff of nightmares.
Celine Ishlikel,
welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Well, thank you so much for having me here. It's wonderful
to to join you. It's great to have you. Um, will you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your background as a theorist um and how you came to write this book um on improper burial?
Yeah, um So I am uh The the question of like tell us Yeah. What is the one but I so I'm a social and political philosopher, uh and um Uh I am in general my my interest uh has been for a long time on the questions around power and relations of power and um the ways that uh interactions between people are also relations that are um infiltrated by power relations, let's say. Uh, I'm from Turkey and Um, working mostly on continental philosophy and philosophies of the global south. And this is actually odd because for a very long time I saw the being from Turkey part of uh who I am as separate from uh the s I work on social and political philosophy part of who who I am. Uh and this book is actually kind of like how I
try to learn and try to teach myself how to bring those two parts together Um for the longest time. So as someone trained in continental philosophy, again political philosophy, for the longest time I became I was interested in this kind of um
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central argument of *Nightmare Remains* about mourning and politics?
0:00–7:23
2
How does Ege Selin Islekel define necro‑sovereignty and its impact on forced disappearance?
7:23–16:41
3
Why does the author connect forced disappearances in Turkey and Latin America?
16:41–23:40
4
What role do “Saturday Mothers” and other collective mourning practices play in resistance?
23:40–30:51
5
How are spaces like Galatasaray Square and Plaza de Maya transformed into sites of political memory?
30:51–36:22
6
What is the significance of “nightmare knowledge” and storytelling for epistemic resistance?
36:22–45:37
7
How does the book address the problem of closure and the politics of erasing disappearance?
45:37–51:55
8
What future research directions does Islekel outline after *Nightmare Remains*?
51:55–1:00:03
Speakers
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