To grieve, and to make grief itself into a resource of politics, is not to be resigned to inaction, but it may be understood as the slow process by which we develop a point of identification with suffering itself […] Then we might critically evaluate and oppose the conditions under which certain human lives are more grievable than others. From where might a principle emerge by which we vow to protect others from the kinds of violence we have suffered, if not from an apprehension of a common human vulnerability?
Judith Butler, Precarious Life, 2004 # 33
Politicize grief
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- According to myths, Europa was named after an Asian princess. Europa was abducted by Zeus, who had transformed himself into a bull, while she was picking flowers with her friends on the beaches of Tyre, a city in modern-day Lebanon. The animal carried her from Asia across the sea to Crete, where it …
What if we tell a different story
What if we tell a different story?
Political language has its own vocabulary: risk, security, growth, competitiveness, resilience, governance.
But where is grief?
The question is not whether emotions are already part of politics. They are. It is about the vocabulary we use to make politics thinkable.
What if we introduced different words into political discourse: grief, mourning, care, love, loss, attachment?
Not as metaphors, but as political concepts.
Who is grievable?
Whose loss counts?
What do we owe to those we have lost?
Perhaps changing the vocabulary changes the questions we can ask.
What if we put grief on the agenda of the European Parliament?
Meike Gleim, 2026of our Imagination
