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4.4 Grievability of the Body

Whose lives are real? Those who are unreal have, in a sense, already suffered the violence of derealization. What, then, is the relation between violence and those lives considered as ‘unreal’? (Butler 2004, 33)2

The sections above have dealt with how sovereign powers can control the body’s life and death. In this section, I explore the aftermath of death, namely how death leads to grievance and how the grievability of bodies differs. This section also looks at how the sovereign controls whether or not a body is allowed to be grieved, as I will explore in the context of my research in the analytical chapters. As I mentioned earlier, and further explore in the analytical chapters, Israel has an established practice to withhold the Palestinian bodies it murdered and store them in freezers or bury them in unmarked graves, leaving family and friends without a body to mourn (B'Tselem 2015, 2017; Maan News 2017; Al Tahhan 2017)3 4 5 6.

In Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (Butler 2004)2, Butler explores the concept of precarity as a shared condition of human life but also examines how different lives become variably precarious due to social and political conditions from the moment we are born. Using the notion of precariousness, Butler (Butler 2009a)7 explores its relationship with grievability. For Butler, the value of life becomes clear when the loss of life becomes apparent, making grievability a “presupposition for the life that matters” (Butler 2009b, 14)8.

In other words, not every life is equally grievable. When life is regarded as ungrievable, another factor comes to mind: dehumanising the person who would otherwise be grieved. Sophie Oliver (Oliver 2010)9 provides a comprehensive understanding of dehumanisation while questioning our notions of humanity and inhumanity. She suggests that testimonial accounts of genocide, torture, and rape warfare reveal the fragility of abstract concepts like human dignity. Herbert C. Kelman (Kelman 1976)10 describes dehumanisation as denying two essential qualities necessary for recognising a person as fully human: identity and community.

Kelman (Kelman 1976)10 argues that recognising someone’s identity involves perceiving them as unique, independent, distinct from others, and capable of making choices. The denial of identity, as I explained earlier in this chapter, is one of the aims of slow erasure, leading to one of the most emotionally devastating consequences experienced by communities and individual survivors of dehumanisation. Yet equally significant is the assault on community, which severs the social bonds and collective frameworks through which identity is affirmed and resistance is sustained.

When lives are not perceived as lives, they are perceived as destructible and ungrievable, as the life itself is already regarded as lost or forfeited (Butler 2009a)7. As such, death is sometimes rationalised as a necessity to protect “the living” (Butler 2009b, 31)8. Using Frames of War (Butler 2009a)7, Andrés Fabián Castro (Andrés Fabián Henao Castro 2019)11 asserts that Butler’s ethical-political proposition relies on the belief that a novel political perspective for comprehending the loss of life is rooted not in the universality of death but in the political equality of lives that can be grieved, which could serve as the framework to reinterpret war and incite popular rebellion. In the Palestinian case, Castro (Andrés Fabián Henao Castro 2019)11 asserts that, as the ones being dispossessed by the ongoing process of what Butler (Butler 2004)2 calls derealisation1 by the settler-colonial sovereign, Palestinian mourning is regarded as a desire that haunts the colonial imaginary. Though Castro (Andrés Fabián Henao Castro 2019)11 is making this assertion based on the obituaries Butler analysed in Antigone’s Claim (Butler 2000)12, as I will discuss in the analytical part of my work, the efforts to disrupt grievance and the mourning process extend beyond obituaries.

Examining grievability and the sovereign control over the mourning process reveals the deep entanglement between power, identity, and dehumanisation. The ability to grieve, or the denial of that ability, serves as a powerful tool in the sovereign’s arsenal, shaping not only the perception of life but also the value attributed to it. By understanding how certain lives are rendered ungrievable, we uncover the mechanisms of dehumanisation that strip individuals of their identity and community, reducing them to mere objects of destruction.

As my analysis progresses into the analytical chapters, the focus will shift to how these dynamics manifest in specific contexts, particularly in the ongoing struggle for recognition and mourning in Palestine. This exploration will highlight the ways in which the disruption of grievance is not only a tactic of control but also a profound reflection of the broader resistance against erasure and dehumanisation.

In conclusion, mourning and its denial emerge as potent markers of how sovereign powers shape the value and meaning of life. Drawing on Butler’s notion of precarity, we see that not all lives are treated as equally grievable. Dehumanisation, by stripping individuals of identity and community, further solidifies this hierarchy. The Palestinian context, as Castro (Andrés Fabián Henao Castro 2019)11 notes, underscores how colonial power disrupts the mourning process to reinforce its authority, yet grief itself can become a site of resistance. Tracing whose deaths are grieved, or denied grief, illuminates the deep entanglement of power, identity, and dehumanisation, forming a compelling basis for the analytical chapters ahead.

References

  1. Writing on how violence renews itself in the face of the apparent inexhaustability of its objects, Butler argues that the ‘derealisation of the “Other” means that it is neither alive nor dead, but interminably spectral.’ (Butler 2004, 8)2 ↩

  2. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso. Verso. ↩↩↩↩

  3. B'Tselem. 2015. Failure to Return Bodies of Palestinian Dead Gravely Injures Their Innocent Families. Http://www.btselem.org/press\ _releases/20151217\ _failure\ _to\ _return\ _bodies. ↩

  4. B'Tselem. 2017. The Separation Barrier. Https://www.btselem.org/separation\ _barrier. ↩

  5. Maan News. 2017. "249 جثمان شهيد وشهيدة محتجز لدى الاحتلال." وكـالـة مـعـا الاخـبـارية. ↩

  6. Al Tahhan, Zena. 2017. "Why Does Israel Keep the Bodies of Palestinians?" Al Jazeera. ↩

  7. Butler, Judith. 2009a. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso. Verso. ↩↩↩

  8. Butler, Judith. 2009b. "Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics." Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 4 (3): i--xiii. ↩↩

  9. Oliver, Sophie. 2010. "Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, Human Dignity Violated." In Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, edited by Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhäuser, and Elaine Webster. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24. Springer. ↩

  10. Kelman, Herbert C. 1976. "Violence Without Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers." Varieties of Psychohistory, 282--314. ↩↩

  11. Andrés Fabián Henao Castro. 2019. "Can the Palestinian Antigone Grieve? A Political Reinterpretation of Judith Butler's Ethical Turn." Settler Colonial Studies 10 (1): 94--109. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473x.2019.1675460. ↩↩↩↩

  12. Butler, Judith. 2000. Antigone's Claim. Columbia University Press. ↩