Overview

What leads us to respond politically to the deaths of some citizens and not others? This is one of the critical questions Heather Pool asks in Political Mourning. Born out of her personal experiences with the trauma of 9/11, Pool’s astute book looks at how death becomes political, and how it can mobilize everyday citizens to argue for political change.  Pool examines four tragedies in American history-the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the lynching of Emmett Till, the September 11 attacks, and the Black Lives Matter movement-that offered opportunities to tilt toward justice and democratic inclusion. Some of these opportunities were taken, some were not. However, these watershed moments show, historically, how political identity and political responsibility intersect and how racial identity shapes who is mourned. Political Mourning helps explain why Americans recognize the names of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland; activists took those cases public while many similar victims have been ignored by the news media.  Concluding with an afterword on the coronavirus, Pool emphasizes the importance of collective responsibility for justice and why we ought to respond to tragedy in ways that are more politically inclusive.

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9781439918937

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Reviews

“Heather Pool’s philosophically rich, insightful, and moving book asks us to see political mourning as a practice of placing ordinary deaths in the service of political change and thus potentially binding us together in a practice of collective responsibility that acknowledges our complicity in those deaths. By the end of Political Mourning, one cannot help but feel that Pool has offered us something more beyond the cases she examines. She has provided us with nothing short of an ethical-political orientation for reckoning with the tragedy of our past. For anyone interested in the health of democracy, this is a book you must read!”  -Melvin Rogers, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University, and coeditor of African American Political Thought: A Collected History “With rigorous argumentation and compelling examples, Political Mourning shows how publics and political identities are formed by responses to loss. It is a stunning work of political theory that will appeal to the field as a whole. Pool makes an exciting contribution to the existing literature on mourning and politics. It is an essential text that all those working in this area will have to engage.”  -Simon Stow, Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies at the College of William and Mary, and author of American Mourning: Tragedy, Democracy, and Resilience

Heather Pool's philosophically rich, insightful, and moving book asks us to see political mourning as a practice of placing ordinary deaths in the service of political change and thus potentially binding us together in a practice of collective responsibility that acknowledges our complicity in those deaths. By the end of Political Mourning, one cannot help but feel that Pool has offered us something more beyond the cases she examines. She has provided us with nothing short of an ethical-political orientation for reckoning with the tragedy of our past. For anyone interested in the health of democracy, this is a book you must read! -Melvin Rogers, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University, and coeditor of African American Political Thought: A Collected History With rigorous argumentation and compelling examples, Political Mourning shows how publics and political identities are formed by responses to loss. It is a stunning work of political theory that will appeal to the field as a whole. Pool makes an exciting contribution to the existing literature on mourning and politics. It is an essential text that all those working in this area will have to engage. -Simon Stow, Marshall Professor of Government and American Studies at the College of William and Mary, and author of American Mourning: Tragedy, Democracy, and Resilience

Author Information

Heather Pool is an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Denison University in Ohio.

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