The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political UsesHarvard University Press, 2000 - 228 Seiten Having set aside age-old ways of mourning, how do people in the modern world cope with tragic loss? Using traditional mourning rituals as an instructive touchstone, Gail Holst-Warhaft explores the ways sorrow is managed in our own times and how mourning can be manipulated for social and political ends. Since ancient times political and religious authorities have been alert to the dangerously powerful effects of communal expressions of grief--while valuing mourning rites as a controlled outlet for emotion. But today grief is often seen as a psychological problem: the bereaved are encouraged to seek counseling or take antidepressants. At the same time, we have witnessed some striking examples of manipulation of shared grief for political effect. One instance is the unprecedented concentration on recovery of the remains of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. In Buenos Aires the Mothers of the Disappeared forged the passion of their grief into a political weapon. Similarly the gay community in the United States, transformed by grief and rage, not only lobbied effectively for AIDS victims but channeled their emotions into fresh artistic expression. It might be argued that, in contrast to earlier cultures, modern society has largely abdicated its role in managing sorrow. But in The Cue for Passion we see that some communities, moved by the intensity of their grief, have utilized it to gain ground for their own agendas. |
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... camps seemed to know instinctively what they had to do . Traumatized and ill though most of them were , they obeyed some un- written law that prompted them to perform the rites they remembered from an age before the camps . They needed ...
... camps and any other re- membered experience from the past ? Memory is always selective . The bereaved , the tortured , the traumatized are obsessed by the need to re- cover as much as they can from the past if they feel it serves a ...
... camps in the same way . As Levi and others have pointed out , there were differences in the way individuals and national groups ( Greek Jews , for example ) dealt with their experiences . The attempt to eliminate individuality in the camps ...