Precarious Life - Violence, Mourning, Politics. [Claudia-Harry-Hoda]

In this article, Judith Butler writes about mourning as a collective action, when a community is struck by a tragedy which affects its members beyond their individual circles. Then "I" instantly becomes "we", because what (as opposed to who) these individuals have lost are parts of themselves that bound them together, regardless of them knowing one another. When people experience loss caused by the death of a loved one, the ties that linked them together disappear forever and are irrecuperable.
Butler specifies that these broken links represent parts of one's being that are now left unresponded, that have died, which is why mourning (without seeking to replace) is an essential phase for the reconcilitation of one with oneself. When we extend our mourning beyond our boundaries as a community is when we become conscious of our vulnerability to violence caused by others. Denying the possibility of a threat by refusing to grieve (and vice versa) only accelerates the possibility of a violent retaliation. And it is when dealing with this melancholy in the extent that it should be dealt with (neither more or less) that one can start realizing the vulnerabilities of others within their own context. Dehumanizing the "other" is a very easy reaction from a community which is a victim of external violence, and the casualties on the other side are reduced to numbers with no value.
It is in most powerful governents' interest to keep the population hostage using paranoia, terror and (in)security in order to justify their own violent responses. If the population was left to mourn without being interrupted by patriotic cheerleading, most probably would it gain a more universal perspective of the situation, and it would realize that the boundaries that unite the nation are only illusional.
Politics can sterilize the most human of experiences under the name of security and protection, when the reality is that in order to face and overcome pain, we should trust our human instincts instead of aborting them.



our word compilation:


Dispossession
Life
Community
Social
Mourning (Substitutability, Melancholy, Greiving)
Relationality
Desire
Autonomy
Interdependence
Fear,Anxiety, Rage
Violence
Touch
Loss
Violence
Body
Vulnerability
exposure
feminism
body
self
other primary condition
I/You
Dehuminaization
paranoia
bounded
Coporeal
boundary