Denison: 'Bodies of Sorrow: Resistant Mourning'

Denison University’s Titus-Hepp Lecture Series welcomes Mariana Ortega, professor of philosophy at John Carroll University, presenting “Bodies of Sorrow: Resistant Mourning, Becoming-with and Coalitional Politics." Artist Kara Walker, while reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, refers to the murky, toxic, filthy water left after the devastation as “muck” and interprets this muck as representative of racist pathology. In this presentation, Ortega discusses the sorrow that flows from this muck and associates it with the injustice that arises from the racism and xenophobia that is pervasive in the U.S. Sorrow is explained in connection to the work of W.E.B Dubois, and is connected to the kind of melancholia that bodies of color experience given their being in worlds that consider them unwanted–a melancholia that can nevertheless be resistant. Ortega also discusses the possibilities of becoming-with and coalitional politics in the face of the muck of racism and xenophobia. This event is co-sponsored by Denison University’s Philosophy Department, the Laura C. Harris Fund, the Department of Modern Languages and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.