`Life is dead here'

Abstract

Using `no man's land' as metaphor for an abjected space outside the recognized domains of the international system, here Northern Cyprus, this article studies subjective experiences under an authoritarian regime. Inviting anthropologists of politics to `sense' the political that underlies contexts that would normalize disruption, the author here gathers signs, in the spatial surroundings and subjectivities in Northern Cyprus, of a glossed experiential catastrophe. The study of subjection under a self-declared `state' unrecognized by the international system is matched here with the reflections of subjective experiences in the radically transformed space. `No man's land' as metaphor does not isolate this particular context administered by an `illegal state' as a particular or peculiar space, but invites anthropologists to consider the `no man's land' aspects of other contexts (within the domain of `legal states') that they study. The article can be particularly read as a critique of anthropologies of globalization and transnationalism, which would reify mobility and ignore the immobilities and experiences of confinement that are produced by the very same international practices. The article addresses anthropologists of politics, of the state, of globalization, of space, as well as of subjectivity.