Grief as a Source, Expression, and Register of Political Sensitivity

Despite the many available revisions of what grief means, the great degree to which it makes us up, how it constitutes our life and links us with others, including strangers, a conventional quadripartite dogma has persistently sustained its standing both in pertinent literature and in public discussions of phenomena of grief: 1) that we grieve only our own losses; 2) that grief works to end itself as quickly as possible; 3) the point is to emerge from grief unharmed; and 4) these goals may be met through forgetting the dead. It cannot be claimed that a clear idea has emerged about how grief that is not set off solely by our own losses can “function” globally such that it is politically sensitized or politically sensitizes us. But it can hardly be denied that there is considerable evidence for the existence of a grief that flouts the classical doctrine of these theories.