Mourning and Grievability: Several Remarks on Judith Butler’s Politics of Living Together

Abstract

In this article, I focus on the function of the notions of precariousness, vulnerability, and grievability of life in Judith Butler’s writings, and reflect upon their place in a broader context of the thought of what I call, following Jacques Derrida, “originary mourning.” On the one hand, therefore, I want to reconstruct Butler’s task of rethinking the possibility of creating a community based on the equal allocation of precariousness and grievability. Such a reflection allows Butler to treat grievability as an insightful and unique passageway to the problematics of safeguarding of life and equality between living beings. On the other hand, by referring to the writings of Jacques Derrida, I want to inscribe Butler’s notions of precariousness and grievability in a broader framework of mourning, to show how every constitution of a social bond based on the principle of shared precariousness and vulnerability inevitably has to come up against the paradox of its genesis.