A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia, David L. Eng & Shinhee Han
In this essay read in class, the authors further dive into Freud's theory of unresolved grief, and critique it for not considering the nuances of racial trauma as well as other hardships people of color must under go. Here, the authors discuss how objects that are racialized become classfied as good or bad. Additionally, the authors attribute the melancholia felt particularly by Asian immigrants to the their struggles of assimilation, imigration, and racialization. Also, the authors talk of the "condition" of whiteness, categorizing it as a contagion that takes place through assimilation, a non-traditional take on whitenesss as well.
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Anger & Grief
Moving Politics, Deborah Gould
In this excerpt, Gould talks of the AIDS advoacy and movement group named ACT UP. During the peak of the AIDS crisis, there was of grief, over the loss of queer & trans communitiy members to a seemingly incurable disaese, and anger towards adminstration and higher up folks who were letting these people die. Gould talks of how these movement makers harnessed that grief and anger into usefulness, by using these emotions in their art and and movements.
Selected works, Gran Fury
In an interview with this creators of Gran Fury, one of the creators talks of how there was a seeming "block" in their emotions and ability to represent them. The art felt very as if it was a response to their frustration at being unable to convey the complexity of their issues. At last, the group decided to shift the primary focus onto how they were feeling, and use that anger and grief as a part of their movements.