FAMILY BETRAYALS: THE TEXTURES OF KINSHIP

Abstract

Abstract In dialogue with Veena Das’s works on kinship, family betrayals and death, in this text I describe the histories of family betrayals of Leonor, highlighting the inscription of these betrayals in everyday life and in the textures of her relationships to kin and to me. I show how the pain of the death of a son, the conflicts between siblings, as well as the forms of remaking herself by reinhabiting and renarrating the events, are embedded in the relationships of the present. The text presents the family betrayals, the conflict between siblings and the death of a son not as spectacular events but as threads in the weave of life. I show how the work of time is important to the reconstruction of life and also to the sharing of experiences of pain.