Mourning the death of a state to enliven it: Notes on the ‘weak’ Yemeni state

Abstract

Observers interested in Yemen often worry about the near collapse of the Yemeni state. Such worries assume that the death of the state will lead to a complete social disintegration. With a brief reflection on the 2011 Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative, the recent US–Saudi-led intervention, this article argues that thinking about the Yemeni state through public worry is an exercise in symbolic violence. This violence articulates itself through the erasure of Yemenis’ communitarian culture; an erasure that becomes the condition for perpetuating the life of the discursively produced ‘weak’ state, and the domination of regional-international powers. This article proposes an alternative approach towards rethinking the ‘weak’ Yemeni state. It suggests that rethinking the Yemeni state through mourning its death could possibly give birth to a novel form of political community. It is through acts of mourning the injury and (imagined) death of the weak Yemeni state that the promise of the state as a unifying apparatus is reclaimed.