The Origins of Transnational Repression: Colonial Legacies and Authoritarian Circulations in Libya’s Disappearance Regime.

Summary

Enforced disappearance is often treated as a domestic aberration or a problem of transitional justice. This article reconceptualises disappearance as a transnational infrastructure of authoritarian governance, through which states assert sovereign power, delineate ideological boundaries, and render political opposition invisible across borders. Drawing on international political sociology, it develops an account of disappearance as an infrastructural technology embedded in colonial legacies, regional exchanges, and evolving security architectures. Focusing on Libya, the article traces how practices of surveillance, legal erasure, public stigmatisation, and extraterritorial violence developed from Italian colonial rule, were consolidated under Gaddafi, and persisted after 2011. Based on archival research, original interviews with former detainees and exiles, and historical analysis, it shows how disappearance became a durable infrastructure of rule over time. Libya’s disappearance regime operated through diplomatic platforms, kinship networks, and regional security cooperation linking North Africa and the Middle East. By historicising the transnational dimensions of disappearance, the article challenges methodological nationalism and advances debates on transnational repression, the performance of sovereignty, and the enduring afterlives of empire.