Disenfranchised Grief

A discussion of the concept of “disenfranchised grief” in light of major shifts in the norms and practices of mourning during the century since Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” set the terms for psychoanalytic thinking about grief. Focusing on verbal mechanisms of mourning, Dean’s article “‘i am a house swollen with the dead’” (the primary reading for this lunchtime talk, with “Mourning and Melancholia” as secondary reading), takes Danez Smith’s seroconversion poems as a test-case, asking how linguistic deixis can facilitate grief-work (Trauerarbeit) today.

Tim Dean holds the Frank Hodgins Chair in American Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, and (with Oliver Davis) Hatred of Sex. A volume of his essays on psychoanalysis and sexuality, El rostro fijo de las perversiones, is forthcoming from Paradiso (Mexico City) and he is currently completing The Fascism in Us All.

Register by September 14 for access to readings and to reserve a seat and a box lunch.