Begoña Aretxaga, a member of the anthropology faculty since August 1999,
died at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House on December 28, 2002, at the
age of 42. Her untimely death occurred after a graceful and courageous struggle
with cancer. Known internationally for her work in political and psychological
anthropology, Begoña was active in the Center for Women's Studies
as well as the Department of Anthropology. She has a wide circle of friends,
relatives,
colleagues, and students throughout the world who will fondly remember her
brilliant
mind, passion for life, infectious good humor, and gift for friendship. Her
death is a tremendous loss, and she is sorely missed.
Begoña (or "Bego") was born in the town of San Sebastián,
Spain on February 23, 1960. She was the oldest of four children. After completing
a bachelor's degree in 1983 (in philosophy and psychology) and a master's
degree in 1985 (in cultural anthropology) at the University of Basque Country,
she
came to the United States for further graduate training. She studied with
Professors James Fernandez, Gananath Obesekere, Joan Scott, and Kay Warren
at Princeton
University, receiving a second master's degree in anthropology in 1988 and
a
doctorate in 1992. The following year she took a position as lecturer at
Harvard University, where she was promoted to assistant professor in 1993
and associate
professor in 1997. She taught at Harvard until 1999, when she accepted a
position at The University of Texas at Austin, where she was tenured in 2001.
She served
as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in Spring 2001.
Her innovative publications on oppositional nationalisms, gender and sexuality,
and political violence have won international acclaim. Two books and numerous
articles draw on extensive research in two troubled areas of Western Europe:
the Basque Country and Northern Ireland. Her 1989 book on Basque separatist funerals,
Los
Funerales en el Nacionalismo Radical Vasco, is a classic in its field. Her
1997 study of separatist women in Northern Ireland,
Shattering Silence:
Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland, has been influential
in ethnic studies, European cultural studies, and women's studies as well as
in anthropology.
As Professor Kay Warren wrote in the May 2003 issue of
Anthropology News,
[Begoña] was interested in the undercurrents of fantasy
that animate rational technologies of state control,
and the clash of nationalist discourses
of citizenship
with the lived experience of violent marginalization in democratic
societies. As a politically engaged feminist, lesbian, and
post-Marxist, Bego was
famed for the power and humanism of her ethnographies
of political movements and
state repression, and for sophisticated theoretical engagement with
postmodern literatures
on subjectivity, power and the state in the face of intensified globalization.
Begoña's research was supported by prestigious fellowships
from the MacArthur Foundation, Social Science Research Council,
Mellon Foundation,
American Council
for Learned Societies, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research,
and Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, among others. An article published
in Ethos won the 1993 Stirling Prize of the Society for Psychological Anthropology,
and she was awarded Harvard's Hoop Prize for senior thesis advising in
1994. She
was invited to participate in numerous international conferences and workshops
and served on the advisory boards of the Journal of Spanish Cultural
Studies and the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.
At the time of her death, Begoña was completing important manuscripts
on subjectivity and the state, youth culture, and journalistic coverage of terrorism.
A major review article, “Maddening States: On the Imaginary of Politics," appeared
posthumously in Annual Reviews in Anthropology, Vol. 32 (2003). She had also
drafted sections of a book entitled "States of Terror: Radical Nationalist
Youth and the Political Imaginary in the Basque Country." Describing the
project, Begoña wrote,
this book manuscript examines the cultural
formation of state and nation through a second generation of Basque
radical nationalists. Engaging in new
forms of
violence that include sabotage, arsonist attacks and intimidation,
this radicalized youth movement has redefined the culture
of nationalism
in the Basque Country
and the social relations that articulate it. Their violent intransigence
has created deep fissures in the social fabric producing an antagonism
between radical and moderate Basque nationalists and
between ‘terrorism’ and ‘the
state.’ My book examines the political culture of this movement
which has become the fertile ground of new militants for the separatist
group
ETA. The
book pays particular attention to the social articulation of fantasies
of nationhood animating separatist violence and sustained by a dynamic
of fear
and phantasmatic
representations of a persecutory state.
Begoña came from a close and loving family. She is survived by her mother,
Mercedes Arechaga-Santos, her brother, Koldo, and her two sisters, Arantxa and
Amaia. All reside in San Sebastián, Spain.
Memorial ceremonies were held at The University of Texas at Austin
and Harvard University in Spring 2003. A major symposium honoring Begoña's
scholarship and legacy was held in Chicago in November 2003, in conjunction
with the
annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Former
colleagues at Harvard
University and The University of Texas at Austin are preparing the
symposium proceedings as well as her unfinished manuscripts for publication.
The Department of Anthropology maintains a display case in Bego's
honor (EPS 1.128) as well as a web site (www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/anthropology/bego).
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
Sue Alexander Greninger, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Pauline Turner Strong (chair), James Brow, and Charles
Hale.
