“The hidden logic underneath American grief culture is Protestant in its bones. Suffering is individual, recovery is personal responsibility, and grief that refuses to resolve itself is a problem to be managed. That logic tells us the goal of grieving is to stop. To integrate, stabilize, return to function. Grief that stays loud, stays embodied, stays political, that insists on being witnessed past the point of social comfort, reads as failure to cope.
What Shi’a mourning traditions suggest is that grief is political. That its privatization is itself a political act, one that serves power by keeping loss individual, manageable, quiet. That the body beating its chest, or dancing at a grave, or wailing in the street is not malfunctioning. It’s insisting that what happened cannot be swallowed silently. It’s making loss visible.”
– Liz Bucar on Substack
