Abstract
This practice-based research develops Ecologies of Poetic Forensics, an investigative mode for approaching political disappearance as a felt, ongoing condition that also reverberates across worlds beyond the human. Focused on my father's disappearance during Venezuela's 1960s revolutionary movement, the research follows relational dynamics within the personal, political, ecological ‘many worlds’ (Indígena Zapatistas 1996) shaped by state violence, including those of campesinos (land-based workers) in Cocorote, Lara State. The inquiry unfolds across Venezuela, Canada, and the United States, tracing territory that exceeds state borders.
The research brings the Skinner Releasing Technique, a movement practice oriented by poetic imagery and embodied attention, into conversation with Indigenous Knowledge that foregrounds the liveliness and agency of all beings (Kohn 2013; Todd 2022; Kimmerer 2003; Wilson 2008). It proposes that political disappearance, as a state logic of terror, can be sensed beyond the human. From this, All Life as Witness names the orientation grounding this investigative mode: a political ethics of care (Sharpe 2016; Spivak 2013) that recognizes more-than-human life as bearing agential witness to violence. The webs-of-relation methodology explores how multispecies attunement might expand notions of witness, and reshape what can be sensed, remembered, and investigated, where official history remains silent.
Engaging the ‘political dimensions of sensation and feeling’ (Fuller & Weizman 2021: 201) through attunement and sentipensar (thinking-feeling), the research works through immersive, site-responsive performative practices and ‘oppositional poetics’ (Hunt 1990) that attend to more-than-human presences within the blurred terrain of political disappearance. Primary sources—letters, photographs, and declassified documents—enter into dialogue with storying and video. Inspired by decolonizing approaches (Tuhiwai Smith 1999/2021; Cusicanqui 2020), the research suggests that an ecology of beings in relation can conjure emancipatory hope (Bloch 1988), unsettling the death-work of disappearance.
Awarding Institution(s)
University of Plymouth
Supervisor
Nikolina Bobic, Kayla Parker
Keywords
Forced Disappearance, Venezuela 1960s, Cold War, Performative Research, Indigenous Knowledge, Campesinos, Skinner Releasing Technique, Oppositional Poetics, Poetic Forensics, more-than-human beings, non-official history, personal narrative, Storying, Attunement, Investigation, Forensics, Relational Ecologies, Archives, Practice as Research
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Date
2026
Embargo Period
2026-06-15
Deposit Date
June 2026
Additional Links
https://www.poetic-forensics.org, https://doi.org/10.24382/1q5c-b064
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Daza-Paris, L. (2026) All Life As Witness: Developing a Mode of Investigation into Political Disappearance in 1960s Venezuela Reframed by Skinner Releasing Technique and Indigenous Knowledge. Thesis. University of Plymouth. Available at: https://www.poetic-forensics.org, https://doi.org/10.24382/1q5c-b064
