Loss: The Politics of Mourning

500 Pages·2002·1.928 MB·English

by  David L. Eng (editor), David Kazanjian (editor)

Loss
Loss
The Politics of Mourning
EDITED BY
David L. Eng and David Kazanjian
with an Afterword by Judith Butler
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
(cid:1)2003 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Loss : the politics of mourning / edited by David L. Eng and David
Kazanjian ; with an afterword by Judith Butler.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN0–520–23235–6(cloth:alk.paper)—ISBN0–520–23236–4(pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Social history—20th century. 2. Loss (Psychology)—Social
aspects. 3. Psychic trauma—Social aspects. 4. Melancholy—Social
aspects. 5. Melancholy in literature. I. Eng, David L., 1967– II.
Kazanjian, David, 1967–
HN16 .L67 2003
306'.09'04—dc21 2002007572
Manufactured in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require-
mentsofANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992(R1997)(PermanenceofPaper).(cid:2)(cid:1)

contents
list of illustrations / vii
preface / ix
Introduction: Mourning Remains
David L. Eng and David Kazanjian / 1
i. bodily remains
Returning the Body without Haunting: Mourning “Nai Phi” and the
End of Revolution in Thailand
Rosalind C. Morris / 29
Black Mo’nin’
Fred Moten / 59
Ambiguities of Mourning: Law, Custom, and Testimony of Women
before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Mark Sanders / 77
Catastrophic Mourning
Marc Nichanian / 99
Between Genocide and Catastrophe
David Kazanjian and Marc Nichanian / 125
Passing Shadows: Melancholic Nationality and Black Critical Publicity
in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of One Blood
Dana Luciano / 148
Melancholia and Moralism
Douglas Crimp / 188
v
vi contents
ii. spatial remains
The Memory of Hunger
David Lloyd / 205
Remains to Be Seen: Reading the Works of
Dean Sameshima and Khanh Vo
Susette Min / 229
Mourning Becomes Kitsch: The Aesthetics of Loss in
Severo Sarduy’s Cobra
Vilashini Cooppan / 251
Theorizing the Loss of Land: Griqua Land Claims in
Southern Africa, 1874–1998
David Johnson / 278
Left Melancholy
Charity Scribner / 300
iii. ideal remains
All Things Shining
Kaja Silverman / 323
A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia
David L. Eng and Shinhee Han / 343
Passing Away: The Unspeakable (Losses) of
Postapartheid South Africa
Yvette Christiansë / 372
Ways of Not Seeing: (En)gendered Optics in
Benjamin, Baudelaire, and Freud
Alys Eve Weinbaum / 396
Legacies of Trauma, Legacies of Activism: ACT UP’s Lesbians
Ann Cvetkovich / 427
Resisting Left Melancholia
Wendy Brown / 458
Afterword: After Loss, What Then?
Judith Butler / 467
contributors / 475
name index / 479
illustrations
Khanh Vo, April 25, 1975 (resonance) / 231
Dean Sameshima, In Between Days (Without You),red bed / 237
Dean Sameshima, In Between Days (Without You),white bed / 240
Khanh Vo, April 25, 1975 (resonance),detail / 243
Anonymous postcard, portrait of the deities Lakshmi
and Ganesha / 268
Bathroom Installation, curated by Andreas Ludwig / 304
Joseph Beuys, Economic Values (Wirtschaftswerte) / 305
Frans Masereel, The City / 397
Frans Masereel, La Nuit / 418
vii

preface
Dean Sameshima’s In Between Days (Without You)is a series of fifteen eight-
by-ten-inch color photographs of twin beds taken in underground gay sex
clubs. Considered in isolation, Sameshima’s red bed, a photograph from
this series (see page 237) would seem to invoke privatized loss: an absent
body, an empty space, thwarted desire. However, In Between Days (Without
You)complicates this interpretation. As Susette Min argues in her essay for
Loss,the successive repetition of Sameshima’s images—each flooded by an
alternate hue and marked by a different arrangement of details—addresses
loss not as an individual but as a collective process. The underground gay
sex clubs bring the private into an alternative public sphere. The rumpled
beds suggest not only the departure but also the imminent arrival of bodies.
These arrivals, in turn, transform thwarted desires into desirous anticipa-
tions. In Between Days (Without You) thus offers a counterintuitive under-
standing of lost bodies, spaces, and ideals by configuring absence as a po-
tential presence.
Loss as a whole embraces this counterintuitive perspective. Instead of
imputing to loss a purely negative quality, the essays in this collection ap-
prehend it as productive rather than pathological, abundant rather than
lacking, social rather than solipsistic, militant rather than reactionary. In-
deed, they assert that the pervasive losses of the twentieth century are laden
with creative, political potential. They insist that, if loss is known only by
what remains of it, then the politics and ethics of mourning lie in the
interpretation of what remains—how remains are produced and animated,
how they are read and sustained.
Loss went into production prior to the events of September 11, 2001.
The violence of the tragedy and its militaristic aftermath foreground the
profound relationship between loss and the politics of mourning. The
ix