Elpenor, the Emmaus Pilgrim and the Missing Person: Painting and the Historical Problem of Life Configuration

Abstract

According to Greek thought and tradition, an individual human life is not completely configured until it is closed by death and settled in social memory by the work of history. A funerary ritual is the first stage of that process. The notion was extended by Christian anthropology, through the Augustinian interpretation of the appearances of Christ after His resurrection. Under the military regimes in South America, the Missing Persons had received neither funerary rites nor post-mortem recognition of their images or effigies. Can the use of silhouettes in the representation of contemporary massacres provide a new device for the configuration of those lives?