Culture and the Rites/Rights of Grief

Book excerpt: Although generally resented and deemed unfavourable for individuals, societies and nations, grief, grievance, and grieving, along with a complex list of epithets that could, under varying circumstances, accompany them – racial grief, political grievance, protracted grieving, chronic grief, traumatic, unresolved grievance – nevertheless occupy a significant place in culture and its manifestations in literature, art, history, science, and politics. Culture and the Rites/Rights of Grief offers an intellectual excursion into realms of potentially regenerative problematics, too frequently dismissed without due consideration. In this light, the volume constitutes a weighty contribution to the field of literary and cultural studies. First and foremost, however, Culture and the Rites/Rights of Grief is to be intellectually enjoyed by readers with an interest in present-day literary, cultural and political phenomena, at the intersection of which grief and grieving execute an imposing presence, albeit one that remains as indeterminate and flitting as the nature of contemporary cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary encounters.