The Democratic Arts of Mourning

Book excerpt: The Democratic Arts of Mourning reflects on the variety of ways in which mourning affects political and social life. In recent decades, political theorists have increasingly examined and explored the themes of loss, grief, and mourning. With an introduction that contextualizes the turn to mourning in previous scholarship on the politics of tragedy, this book includes twelve chapters that clarify the intertwinement between politics and mourning. The chapters are organized into five thematic sections that each shed light on how democratic societies relate to loss, grief, suffering, and death. Collectively, the chapters explore the concept of mourning and its relationship to civic rituals, memorials, taboos, social movements, and popular music. Chapters examine how social groups defend their members against experiences of grief or mourning, or how poetic expressions—such as ancient Greek tragedy—can address the catastrophes of human life. Other chapters explore the politics of symbols and bodies, and how they can become fraught objects that stand in for a society’s undigested—unmourned—losses and absences. The book concludes with an interview with Bonnie Honig, whose own work on mourning has been deeply influential in contemporary political theory.