For a political philosophy of grief

• Main Author: Carla Rodrigues
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) 2020-07-01
• Series: O Que Nos Faz Pensar
• Online Access: http://www.oquenosfazpensar.fil.puc-rio.br/index.php/oqnfp/article/view/737

This paper proposes a bibliographical review of the theme of grief in the work of Judith Butler, taking as its central argument the idea that grief is the concept around which she organizes her philosophy. By the claim of the right to public mourning, criticism of state violence, dispossession and interdependence, Butler draws an ethical proposition from the condition of grief, given since the beginning of life. The condition of grief in lives is unequally framed and, in this sense, Butler seeks to reveal the pictures that sustain the condition of possibility of maintaining certain lives as precarious. In the course of the text, I articulate the theme of grief in Butler with the notions of biopolitics (Foucault), necropolitics (Mbembe) and state of exception (Agamben) in order to reflect how the covid-19 pandemic exposes us to a condition of global vulnerability and, at the same time, accentuates inequalities between precarious lives.