Grief
This note engages with the topic of grief, as a subset of Emotion.
Objective
Consider grief in more-than-human contexts.
Reflection and mourning do not prevent action, instead they inform and direct the response.
Definitions
Grief: the reaction to loss.
Possible interpretations:
- a natural human reaction
- a psychiatric disorder
- a disease process
This is from Archer, considered in application to humans only and focusing on a loss of a close relationship.
Archer, John. The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss. London: Routledge, 1999.
For the debates in the medical contexts, see:
Stroebe, Margaret S., Henk Schut, and Jan Van den Bout, eds. Complicated Grief: Scientific Foundations for Health Care Professionals. London: Routledge, 2013.
On emotions as a form of judgement, including grief in chapter 1, see:
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
For Animals
'Ideal definition' of grief: "Grief can be said to occur when a survivor animal acts in ways that are visibly distressed or altered from the usual routine, in the aftermath of the death of a companion animal who had mattered emotionally to him or her". (not so sure: visible to whom? what is the 'usual routine' in a disturbed world? what is a 'companion animal'? how does one know what matters emotionally? How can a definition of grief can be made defensible from critics seeing it as narrow and post-constructed to meet the needs of a pre-conceived argument?)
This is from King, Barbara J. How Animals Grieve. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Components and Context
"The term grief can be defined as a type of stress reaction, a highly personal and subjective response that an individual makes to a real, perceived, or anticipated loss. Grief reactions may occur in any loss situation, whether the loss is physical or tangible, such as a death, significant injury, or loss of property; or symbolic and intangible such as the loss of a dream."
Distinguish between:
- bereavement - an objective state of loss (and all lifeforms can experience such losses)
- grief - a subjective response to loss (and all forms of life have a form of subjectivity, or so one can argue)
- mourning - a process of adapting to loss (cf. grieving, grief work); this can also refer to the social aspects of grief such as norms, patterns of behaviour and rituals. So, from here it appears that grief is always in some aspects social
Doka, Kenneth J. “Grief and Bereavement.” In Encyclopedia of Bioethics, edited by Stephen G. Post, 1028–31. 1978. Reprint, Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2004.
Key Questions
- Can grief be collective? And therefore: multi-generational, multi-species, etc? Cf. that above grief is presumed to be 'personal' - presumed to be confined to an organism and to a human organism at that.
- Does grief depend on consciousness and self-awareness? Can living beings such as ants or bacteria experience grief (an an equivalent thereof)? I would say that an ant returning after a day of foraging with some mates carrying heavy burden of food for the nest will exhibit erratic and stressed behaviour finding the nest destroyed (burned, etc.). They would run around trying to figure our what is to do, then settle somehow, following the patterns on grief. Or not?
- Does grief have ethical valence? Is it a good or a bad thing or it depends?
- Is it OK to alleviate grief? When?
- Is it OK to instrument grief, e.g., for some useful action in the world, when?
- Is it a paradox that grief prevents normal functionality and should be alleviated but on the other hand grief can encourage action and then should be agitated for? Some counterintuitive consequences here...
E.g., Singer would argue that: "The aversive aspect of pain, and its tendency to cause distress, are found in states that are not painful, such as hunger, cold, fear, and grief. Therefore, our definition of suffering may be extended to include these conditions. In all such cases suffering requires a subjective state with an aversive aspect." Can we say that all life has such states (not what sentientists would underwrite, but...), cf. Subjectivity, Sentience Book Project.
Singer, Peter. “The Significance of Animal Suffering.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, no. 1 (1990): 9–12. https://doi.org/10/b6c8s5.
Grief and Nature
What or who are 'grievable'? Cf. the note on Agent
Head, Lesley. Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Gillespie, Kathryn. “Witnessing Animal Others: Bearing Witness, Grief, and the Political Function of Emotion.” Hypatia 31, no. 3 (2016): 572–88. https://doi.org/10/gp8fzd.
Crownshaw, Rick. “Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief Ed. by Ashlee Cunsolo and Karen Landman (Review).” American Imago 77, no. 1 (2020): 232–45. https://doi.org/10/gnj3f9.
Batavia, Chelsea, Michael Paul Nelson, and Arian D. Wallach. “The Moral Residue of Conservation.” Conservation Biology 34, no. 5 (2020): 1114–21. https://doi.org/10/ggvkrz.
Chapter 8 on Emotion discusses grief:
Gruen, Lori, ed. Critical Terms for Animal Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
There is a chapter on grief and other relevant thoughts in:
Rose, Deborah Bird. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Cunsolo, Ashlee, and Karen Landman, eds. Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss. Campbellfield: Raven Press, 2022.
Extending the definition of trauma to include climate-related anxiety and “ecological grief” over existing and past losses (ways of life, livelihoods, ecosystems, species)".
'Ecological grief': Greenland residents traumatised by climate emergency | Greenland | The Guardian
Erin Fitz-Henry, “Grief and the Inter-Cultural Public Sphere: ‘Rights of Nature’ and the Contestation of ‘Global Coloniality,’” Interface 9, no. 2 (2017): 143–61.
Cases
Can one grieve for nonhuman and abiotic or hybrid entities such as ice? The answer is that there are clear precedents.
How to Mourn a Glacier | The New Yorker
Sideris, Lisa H. “Grave Reminders: Grief and Vulnerability in the Anthropocene.” Religions 11, no. 6 (2020). https://doi.org/10/gjjkhc.
Jamail, Dahr. The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. New York: The New Press, 2019.
Gibson, Julia D. “Climate Justice for the Dead and the Dying: Weaving Ethics of Palliation and Remembrance from Story and Practice.” PhD Thesis, Michigan State University, 2019.
Animal Feelings
Safina, Carl. Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. New York: Henry Holt, 2015.
Bekoff, Marc. “Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures.” BioScience 50, no. 10 (2000): 861–70. https://doi.org/10/d55vpf.
King, Barbara J. How Animals Grieve. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Rituals
Mourning, remembrance, heritage.
Interesting as a possible area where design can contribute.
Brewster, Shelby. “Remembrance Day for Lost Species.” Performance Research 25, no. 2 (2020): 95–101. https://doi.org/10/gmwqgk.
References
Johnston, Jay, and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, eds. Animal Death. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2013.
Pribac, Teya Brooks. Enter the Animal: Cross-Species Perspectives on Grief and Spirituality. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2021.
Footnotes
See chapter 1 in Allan Køster and Ester Holte Kofod, Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Dimensions of Grief Experience (London: Routledge, 2021).˄
See Cindy Milstein, Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief (Chico: AK Press, 2017) for one example.˄
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