Hi dear All,
I have been invited by the moderates to begin by writing about my work, which
is closely related to the overall theme of this week's discussion. In the
first part of this introduction I will address my work that evokes public
Lament as performative and political act in public domain. I will continue by
discussing recent work that has to do with memory and amnesia as related the
construction of a physical and political space of a city.
By enacting ancient gestures of lamentation, my recent work Sustenazo considers
contemporary contexts of apathy, indifference, invisibility, and historical
amnesia within the public forum. Lament is extreme expression in the face of
loss. Ultimately, as Judith Butler wrote, “grief furnishes a sense of political
community of a complex order, and it does this first of all by bringing to the
fore the relational ties that have implications for theorizing fundamental
dependency and ethical responsibility.”[i] Group mourning is an act of
political force, and not only a response to individual grief. We should ask
then, after Butler, whose life is or is not worthy of grief? In the context of
war, loss is often about the loss of the Other, but in reality the Other is
also a part of oneself. Empathy and collective mourning, including mourning the
loss of others who are supposed to be our enemies, can become a powerful
political tool, in opposition to heroic, masculine fantasies of conquest and
power.
T o b e c o n t i n u e d l a t e r t o n i g h t . . .
Monika Weiss
[i] Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
(London/New York: Verso, 2004), p. 22.
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