Troubling grief

Spectrality, temporality, refusal, catharsis

Bibliographic Data

ID3451485
AuthorsAlex Broom (0000-0003-1258-1140, The University of Sydney, corresponding author), Michelle Peterie (0000-0002-7182-7246, The University of Sydney)
Year2024
Volume72
Issue5
Pages1018-1037
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380261241228412
OpenAlexW4391883647
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited74

In the cultural imaginary of death and dying, the felt contours of grief are still often taken for granted. Grief is predominantly understood as sadness at loss; as melancholia at the finitude of relationships. Grief is conceived as a temporally-bound affective period in which one processes the pain of loss - that is, gets used to absence and works toward 'moving on'. In this article, we centre the accounts of people caring for the dying, or recently having experienced the death of a loved one to cancer, to advance a sociological analysis of grief that untethers it from this normative environ. In the lives of those living with death, we argue, grief evades social conventions and temporal limits. It is a spectral presence that shows little concern for expected affective crescendos (being at death's door/just departed). In its unruliness, grief reveals and resists the normative scene of death and dying, as collective pressure - for closure, for forgetting, for moving on - amplifies rather than ameliorates its felt experience. Centring the experiences of carers, we thus argue for an enlivened sociology of grief that illuminates its disruptive temporality, its haunting spectrality, and its propensity to instigate both affective refusals and (attempted) moments of collective catharsis

Catharsis · Epistemology · Grief · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Temporality · Emotional Labor in Professions · Gender Studies · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Homelessness and Social Issues · Philosophy · Psychology