Borders and the Politics of Mourning

With keynote address by Judith Butler

The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility (ZIMM) is honored to host the launch event of “Borders and the Politics of Mourning” a special issue published by Social Research: An International Quarterly (Summer 2016), with a keynote address by Judith Butler.

With more than 15,000 migrants dead and disappeared since 2014, the UNHCR has called migrant deaths at sea “the new normal”. Despite the proliferation of images and testimonies about the migration “crisis”, responsibility and accountability for the consequences of border regimes remains elusive, while thousands of migrant deaths around the world remain unnamed, invisible, and ungrievable. This special issue, co-edited by Alexandra Délano (ZIMM Co-Director) and Benjamin Nienass, examines the symbolic-material landscape of border spaces in the United States, Mexico, and Europe and the way in which interventions through a “politics of loss” challenge existing visions of the border. The politics of mourning is discussed in this context as a political-affective engagement with border deaths, from forensic efforts, to efforts of memorialization, to the investment in found objects, from Arizona to Lampedusa. The special issue features articles by Burkhard Liebsch, Miriam Ticktin (ZIMM co-Director), Marina Kaneti and Mariana Prandini Assis, Jenny Edkins, Maurizio Albahari, Andreas Oberprantacher, Alexandra Délano Alonso and Benjamin Nienass, Corrie Boudreaux, Erdem Evren and Alice von Bieberstein, Arely Cruz-Santiago, and Ernesto Schwartz-Marin, and an interview with Mercedes Doretti, co-founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (and recipient of The New School honorary degree in 2016).
The launch event begins at 4pm with a panel discussion with authors Maurizio Albahari, Alexandra Délano, Jenny Edkins, Burkhard Liebsch, and Benjamin Nienass, followed by comments from Banu Bargu and Anne McNevin.

Judith Butler will give the keynote address entitled “Grievability and Resistance” at 6pm.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Public Scholarship, the Janey Program in Latin American Studies, and Global Studies at The New School.

Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall

55 West 13th Street, Room I-202, New York, NY 10011