Skip to Main Content

Mourning in America: Race and the Politics of Loss

Online ISBN:
9781501706189
Print ISBN:
9781501704956
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

Mourning in America: Race and the Politics of Loss

David W. McIvor
David W. McIvor
Colorado State University
Find on
Published:
4 November 2016
Online ISBN:
9781501706189
Print ISBN:
9781501704956
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

Recent years have brought public mourning to the heart of American politics, as exemplified by the spread and power of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has gained force through its identification of pervasive social injustices with individual losses. The deaths of Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and so many others have brought private grief into the public sphere. The rhetoric and iconography of mourning has been noteworthy in Black Lives Matter protests, but this text argues that we have paid too little attention to the nature of social mourning—its relationship to private grief, its practices, and its pathologies and democratic possibilities. The book addresses significant and urgent questions about how citizens can mourn traumatic events and enduring injustices in their communities. The book offers a framework for analyzing the politics of mourning, drawing from psychoanalysis, Greek tragedy, and scholarly discourses on truth and reconciliation. This book connects these literatures to ongoing activism surrounding racial injustice, and it contextualizes Black Lives Matter in the broader politics of grief and recognition. The text also examines recent, grassroots-organized truth and reconciliation processes such as the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2004–006), which provided a public examination of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979—a deadly incident involving local members of the Communist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close