Description
On November 12, 1991 the Indonesian troops fired upon a peaceful memorial procession to a Cemetery in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste. In that occasion, more than 271 East Timorese were killed and an equal number were disappeared and are believed dead. A footage of the Massacre was made by international journalists and it is considered to be the turning point of the history of Timor-Leste. According to Max Sthal, responsible for the footage, the victims that were still alive and could still move were making their way towards him: “They were showing me their wounds…they wanted the world to see. They were dying around me, but – and the survivors later told me this – more important than the fact of their dying was that their deaths be meaningful; that all this should be ‘for’ something” (Sthal, 2017).
Drawing on this perspective, I propose that by considering the wounded body as the element that compels us to respond to violence; makes us vulnerable and uncomfortable; and disrupts our “human ontological dignity of being as body” (Cavarero, 2007, p.5), we can examine the importance and the centrality of the wounded body and its affects in the East Timorese struggle for independence. So, this research asks: how did wounded bodies affect the East Timorese struggle for independence? My central hypothesis is that wounded bodies were mobilized as affective technologies of shame that were central to resistance and solidarity movements in/for Timor-Leste during the 90s, to call international attention to the ‘’Question of Timor-Leste’’ and still plays a key role in memory practices in the country.
