The viscosity of grief: Teresa Margolles at the scene of the crime

Abstract

This essay considers the possibilities of collective political mourning through Mexican artist Teresa Margolles's 2009 contribution to the Venice Biennale, De Que Otra Cosa Podríamos Hablar? (What Else Could We Talk About?). The author posits that our prevailing notions of grief and mourning rely upon a stable conception of single human subjects whose loss can be narrativized. This, the author argues throughout the essay, limits the possibilities of political action by restricting mourning to subjects who have a biography. He then takes the use of objects, fluids, and other materials in Margolles's installation to challenge what Judith Butler refers to as the narcissism of mourning. The author suggests that Margolles's piece reconsiders how matter functions as the very tissue that allows us to critique violence. He then turns toward Gil Anidjar's critique of the political history of blood in order to show the ways in which the presence of blood in the work allows us to disentangle the subject of violence from biographical subjecthood, thus expanding our capacity to engage mourning as a political act beyond single bodies.