The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses

241 Pages·2000·7.63 MB·English

by  Gail Holst-Warhaft

The Cue for Passion

The Cue for Fassion
GRIEF AND ITS POLITICAL USES
Gail Holst-Warhaft
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England 2000
Copyright © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holst-Warhaft, Gail, 1941-
The cue for passion : grief and its political uses / Gail Holst-Warhaft.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-00224-5 (alk. paper)
1. Mourning customs—Political aspects. 2. Grief—Political aspects.
I. Title.
GT3390.H65 2000
393'.9—dc21 00-021841
For Zoe and Simon

Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to many people who have read this book in its various ear-
lier incarnations and offered advice and encouragement. In particular
I thank Margaret Alexiou, Cynthia Chase, David Curzon, Gregory
Dobrov, Michael Fishbane, Sander Gilman, Elliot Ginsburg, Lorraine
Helms, Michael Herzfeld, Iakovos Kambanellis, Chana Kronfeld, Da-
vid McCann, Sarah McKibben, Paul Muldoon, Spyros Orfanos, Carlos
Rodríguez Matos, Keith Taylor, Sidney Tarrow, Susan Tarrow, James
Winn, James Young, and the Institute for the Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Michigan, which invited me to present a paper based on some
of the material in Chapter 2.
Research for this book began while I was a fellow at the Society for
the Humanities at Cornell University. I thank its director, Dominick
LaCapra, and the fellows of the year 1996-97 for their stimulating dis-
cussions. I thank Daniel Fireside for interpreting and facilitating my
discussions with two of the mothers of the "disappeared" of Argentina,
Elsa Santi de Manzoti and Evel Aztarbe Petrini, and with members of
the Guatemalan "Organization of Widows." I also wish to thank Geor-
gette King and Angel Sierra, of AIDSWORK, for information about
the Ithaca community, and Caroline Spicer, reference librarian at Cor-
nell's Olin Library, for her invaluable help.
Lastly, I thank my dear, demanding reader, Zellman.

Contents
Introduction: The Theater of Mourning 1
1 Tears 20
2 Laughter 54
3 Bones 78
4 Disappearance 104
5 Plague 124
6 Memorials 158
Afterthoughts 198
Notes 203
References 213
Index 225