Nothing can devastate us more than the loss of a loved one. In this episode of Overthink, David and Ellie talk about mourning. What kinds of losses hurl us into a state of mourning? Are there healthy and unhealthy ways of mourning? Or does this distinction not apply in cases when we are dealing with irreparable loss? And how do we deal with the loss of someone when the feeling of loss doesn’t naturally resolve but rather stays with us like “an open wound,” as Freud says? To shed light on this difficult experience, your hosts explore Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, Roland Barthes’ account of grieving the death of his mother, as well as Emilio Uranga’s analysis of the role that culture plays in our experience of death. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss how Freud’s notion of ambivalence can help to make sense of mourning.
Works Discussed:
Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary
Julie Alev Dilmaç, “The new forms of mourning: Loss and exhibition of the death on the internet”
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Corina Sas and Alina Coman, “Designing personal grief rituals: An analysis of symbolic objects and actions”
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”
Emilio Uranga, “Dos teorias de la muerte: Sartre y Heidegger”
Emilio Uranga, “Notas para un estudio del mexicano”
Emilio Uranga, Analysis of Mexican Being
Highlight: Uranga and zozobra
Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga created an existential ontology rooted in Mexican history and experience. For Uranga, the “essence” of the human is the accident (the accident is at the junction of Being and Nothingness).
An emotion associated with this ontology is zozobra, which is a state of extreme rest and incertitude. It is an awareness of living in a space where anything can happen and is closely related to his idea of being-as-accident.
The word comes from maritime practice, when strong waves make a captain lose control of a ship, leaving the ship to the mercy of the waves.
This emotional state, for Uranga, is anchored in the reality of the human condition, which is the condition of the accident; experiencing this emotion is what brings one to a more authentic existence.
