Abstract
This article examines the case of COVID-19 deaths and grief in Iran in order to shed light on how the biological, social and political ‘risks of contagion’ combine to impact mourning and grief. As a contagious biological agent, the novel coronavirus causes people to suffer, die and grieve alone. But this loneliness is deepened due to social stigma and political abandonment. Conceptually guided by Mary Douglas’s work on the socio-cultural and political constructions of ‘contagion’, Judith Butler’s notion of ‘ungrievable lives’ and Kenneth Doka’s concept of ‘disenfranchised grief’, the authors of this article have undertaken a preliminary mixed-methods study that explores the possibility of a transnational, decolonial understanding of grief in a time of contagion.
Highlights
Research and theorizing in the time of global contagionThis article examines the personal, social and political aspects of grief in the context of a global contagion
Deaths from COVID-19 can be impacted by all of these factors: the proper rituals of burial and mourning are disrupted due to public health considerations; the victims are sometimes blamed – rightly or wrongly – for bringing about their own death by failing to follow public health protocols; and COVID-19 deaths are politically inconvenient – and in some cases covered up – because they challenge the competence of political leaders and public officials
The massive death toll and economic devastation of the coronavirus is just one in a series of recent collective traumas, ranging in the past year alone from deadly protests in November 2019 that cost hundreds of lives, to heightened conflicts with the US under President Trump resulting in punishing economic sanctions, the killing of General Ghasem Soleimani in January 2020 by American drones, and the downing of Ukrainian Flight PS752 in the ensuing hostilities
Summary
Keywords Contagion, coronavirus, COVID-19, disenfranchised grief, Mary Douglas, grief, Iran, mourning, pandemic, risk This article examines the personal, social and political aspects of grief in the context of a global contagion. We scoured our sources for data on the biological, social and political handling of the contagion: How are the dead bodies treated?
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