Cultures of Disenfranchised Grief: An Online Work-in-Progress Series

The term ‘disenfranchised grief’ is increasingly being used to denote grief experiences that are overlooked by wider society.  At the time of its coining, Kenneth J. Doka (1989) envisaged that the term be used to refer to experiences of death-related grief that lacked social recognition. In the preface to his more recent volume on the subject, however, he notes that the term has taken on ‘a conceptual life of its own’ (Doka 2002, XIV), extending far beyond the parameters initially imagined. The concept ‘integrates psychological, biological, and sociological perspectives on grief and loss’ (Doka 2002, 5), with a particular focus on the often-overlooked social dimension. This emphasis on the social opens important areas of inquiry that take account of diverse cultural experiences of grief, understanding culture as ‘the very milieu within which a loss is both perceived and grieved’ (Barbant 2002, 26). It is on this neglected social dimension that the work-in-progress series will focus, considering manifestations and representations of disenfranchised grief provoked by both death-related grief that is socially marginalised and experiences of loss that extend beyond death and dying.

This series has been organised by Jordan McCullough, as part of Virtual, Visiting Research Fellowship in the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University, UK (2023–24).