Cansu Bostan

Research Areas:

• Necropolitics and Late-modern Colonial Occupations
• Postcolonialism
• Spatializations of Law
• Ethnographic Inquiries of Law

Current Research:

This study presents an ethnographic exploration of subjective experiences relying on different historicizations and the ways they inform the connections between law and justice in Northern Kurdistan. By analyzing law and justice as ethnographic objects whose forms and functions are contingent upon being named and attributed meanings, inquiries focus on various historicizations/spatializations in Northern Kurdistan to understand: i) the modern spatiotemporal boundaries of the Turkish nation-state, its law and justice narratives, ii) experiences informing justice aspirations and their translations into the experience-distant language of state law, and iii) appearing/disappearing mechanisms attributed justness and functions of legality beyond the state law. During ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Amed between April-September 2019, three data collection methods were employed: participant observations, semi-structured interviews with human rights lawyers, institutional representatives and inhabitants (life history narratives) and document collection. The study draws on a spatial analysis informed by Michel Foucault’s insights on the truth-subjectivity regime, ‘games of truth’ and the triad of ‘power-knowledge-space,’ and adopts his analytical strategy of nominalist intervention facilitating an understanding of the web of relationalities within which law and justice gain particular meanings. In this way, one may understand how these relationalities trigger attachments of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ to various practices, which, by drawing on the ‘game of truth,’ is referred to as the ‘game of justice’ by this study. This study shows that the connection of justice to law is triggered by spatializations shaping their relationship in particular encounters. By presenting the accounts, namings and meanings in their multiplicity, this study hopes to contribute to an imaginary of honourable and sustainable peace in Northern Kurdistan.