Alexander Keller Hirsch is associate professor of political science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.David W. McIvor is assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Art and faith traditions across the world have long acknowledged that suffering is a part of life and have offered ways of mourning loss, finding solace, and achieving reconciliation. Episodes and histories of human suffering have also provoked searching questions about the nature of agency, the limits of responsibility, and the redemptive power of public remembrance which continue to inform (and sometimes inflame) political debate and discussion. The Democratic Arts of Mourning assembles insightful and thought-provoking analyses of the significance of mourning for democratic politics from a variety of theoretical standpoints (e.g., Freud, Adorno, Judith Butler) and in relation to controversies around appropriate public responses to historical injustices and contemporary episodes of profound loss (e.g., 9/11, Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church massacre). For readers interested in understanding better how social movements coalesce around demands for public acknowledgment of past injustices or present atrocity, how officials facilitate or circumvent the public work of mourning, or how activists and creative artists invite reconsideration of who we are through reflection on what we have suffered (or allowed others to suffer), this volume merits serious and sustained consideration.

• Chapter 1: Groups Can Hardly Mourn, by C. Fred AlfordChapter 2: Must we Always Mourn? A War on Terror Veterans Memorial, by Steven JohnstonChapter 3: Removing the Confederate Flag in South Carolina in the Wake of Charleston:Sovereignty, Symbolism, and White Domination in a “Colorblind” State, by Heather PoolChapter 4: Mourning Denied: The Tabooed Subject, by Claudia LeebChapter 5: Not In My Graveyard, by Osman BalkanChapter 6: Reparations, Refusals, and Grief: Idle No More and Democratic Mourning, by Vicki HsuehChapter 7: Burning Rage: Disenfranchised Mourning and the Political Possibilities of Anger, by Shirin S. DeylamiChapter 8: The Funeral and the Riot: #BlackLivesMatter, Antagonistic Politics, and the Limits of (Exceptional) Mourning, by David Myer TeminChapter 9: Music, Mourning, and Democratic Resilience: Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, by Simon StowChapter 10: Speaking Silence: Holding and the Democratic Arts of Mourning, by Joel SchlosserChapter 11: Rituals of Re-Entry: An Interview with Bonnie Honig, by David W. McIvor and Alexander Keller Hirsch

Alexander Keller Hirsch is associate professor of political science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.David W. McIvor is assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Art and faith traditions across the world have long acknowledged that suffering is a part of life and have offered ways of mourning loss, finding solace, and achieving reconciliation. Episodes and histories of human suffering have also provoked searching questions about the nature of agency, the limits of responsibility, and the redemptive power of public remembrance which continue to inform (and sometimes inflame) political debate and discussion. The Democratic Arts of Mourning assembles insightful and thought-provoking analyses of the significance of mourning for democratic politics from a variety of theoretical standpoints (e.g., Freud, Adorno, Judith Butler) and in relation to controversies around appropriate public responses to historical injustices and contemporary episodes of profound loss (e.g., 9/11, Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church massacre). For readers interested in understanding better how social movements coalesce around demands for public acknowledgment of past injustices or present atrocity, how officials facilitate or circumvent the public work of mourning, or how activists and creative artists invite reconsideration of who we are through reflection on what we have suffered (or allowed others to suffer), this volume merits serious and sustained consideration.

• Chapter 1: Groups Can Hardly Mourn, by C. Fred AlfordChapter 2: Must we Always Mourn? A War on Terror Veterans Memorial, by Steven JohnstonChapter 3: Removing the Confederate Flag in South Carolina in the Wake of Charleston:Sovereignty, Symbolism, and White Domination in a “Colorblind” State, by Heather PoolChapter 4: Mourning Denied: The Tabooed Subject, by Claudia LeebChapter 5: Not In My Graveyard, by Osman BalkanChapter 6: Reparations, Refusals, and Grief: Idle No More and Democratic Mourning, by Vicki HsuehChapter 7: Burning Rage: Disenfranchised Mourning and the Political Possibilities of Anger, by Shirin S. DeylamiChapter 8: The Funeral and the Riot: #BlackLivesMatter, Antagonistic Politics, and the Limits of (Exceptional) Mourning, by David Myer TeminChapter 9: Music, Mourning, and Democratic Resilience: Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, by Simon StowChapter 10: Speaking Silence: Holding and the Democratic Arts of Mourning, by Joel SchlosserChapter 11: Rituals of Re-Entry: An Interview with Bonnie Honig, by David W. McIvor and Alexander Keller Hirsch