The Democratic Arts of Mourning

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.

Alexander Keller Hirsch is associate professor of political science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
David W. McIvor is assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Chapter 1: Groups Can Hardly Mourn, by C. Fred Alford
Chapter 2: Must we Always Mourn? A War on Terror Veterans Memorial, by Steven Johnston
Chapter 3: Removing the Confederate Flag in South Carolina in the Wake of Charleston:
Sovereignty, Symbolism, and White Domination in a "Colorblind" State, by Heather Pool
Chapter 4: Mourning Denied: The Tabooed Subject, by Claudia Leeb
Chapter 5: Not In My Graveyard, by Osman Balkan
Chapter 6: Reparations, Refusals, and Grief: Idle No More and Democratic Mourning, by Vicki Hsueh
Chapter 7: Burning Rage: Disenfranchised Mourning and the Political Possibilities of Anger, by Shirin S. Deylami
Chapter 8: The Funeral and the Riot: #BlackLivesMatter, Antagonistic Politics, and the Limits of (Exceptional) Mourning, by David Myer Temin
Chapter 9: Music, Mourning, and Democratic Resilience: Bruce Springsteen's The Rising, by Simon Stow
Chapter 10: Speaking Silence: Holding and the Democratic Arts of Mourning, by Joel Schlosser
Chapter 11: Rituals of Re-Entry: An Interview with Bonnie Honig, by David W. McIvor and Alexander Keller Hirsch