The Violence of Disappearance: Reading the Boko Haram Kidnapping

‘To disappear’ is no longer a metaphysical-theological mystery or magic act, but a political invention that must be seen as integral to the violence of modern politics. Focusing on the disappearance of over 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram last year, the author explores the rhetoric of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign and the creation of the political category of ‘the disappeared’. This essay argues for a reading of disappearance not in abstraction, but as an agential act—real people go missing as a result of real physical acts by real people, and to speak of simply ‘disappearance’ without referring to the agential hand behind the disappearance is to stay focused on the victims and invisibilise the perpetrators.