Grace Simbulan

During former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs,” an estimated 12,000 to 30,000 people, mostly from poor communities, were killed under the guise of fighting crime. “Archives of the Unforgotten” examines how families of drug war victims, cultural workers, church and legal groups, and human rights defenders in Manila engage with memory and loss to shape political, social, and artistic responses to state violence. Through the lens of “ecologies of justice,” a relational approach that foregrounds the web of interconnected actors, narratives, and practices in both the definition and pursuit of justice, the project uses sensory ethnography to bridge anthropology, visual studies, and memory studies to explore how practices of commemoration and memorialization shape alternative futures in the wake of violence.