Borders and the Politics of Mourning: Social Research Special Launch Event

Sponsored by the New School Center for Public Scholarship

Thursday, October 6th

4pm-8pm

The New School 

Center for Public Scholarship
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, I202
55 West 13th Street

New York, NY 10011

The Zolberg Institute 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. 

For more information and to RSVP please click here.