Political subjectivity, transversal mourning and a caring common: responding to deaths in the Mediterranean

Abstract

Exploring Judith Butler’s question on whose lives are not publicly mourned and Édouard Glissant’s critique on the “duality of self-perception,” this paper focuses on why the mass deaths in the Mediterranean have not caused a public outcry in Western Europe like the one that followed the terrorist attacks in Paris 2015. The article proposes transversal mourning as a point of departure from which to think about an anti-racist political subjectivity which strives for a caring common and transformative justice. Drawing on the theoretical work of Diego Sztulwark and Amador Fernández-Savater on political subjectivity and engaging with Gillian Rose’s work on the materiality of mourning through her engagement with representation and labour, this paper develops an analysis of transversal mourning on four levels. First, it engages with Judith Butler’s metrics of grievability by exploring mourning as an ethical condition. Secondly, it discusses the logic of the duality of self-perception by examining national mourning and the coloniality of representation. Thirdly, it relates political subjectivity to the mourning for All by engaging with the ontological dimension of the political. Lastly, it focuses on the labour of mourning as the material grounds for forging a caring common. The article concludes with some observations on transversal mourning’s potential for transformative justice.