Judith Butler beyond gender is philosophy in motion. There is nothing superfluous about this book. Nor is there any pretension of displaying erudition. What one will read here is political philosophy, which is philosophy itself, according to the author. She takes personal and collective mourning as an object of research and reflection. In this project, she joins Judith Butler, a philosopher who has been approaching mourning as a necessary and crucial issue for political criticism for quite some time now.

We live in a time when mourning has a great meaning. The covid-19 pandemic has already caused the death of millions of people around the world, hundreds of thousands in Brazil. An immense collective loss. We are hopelessly constituted by our losses and absences. We are also constituted by our memories. Carla Rodrigues also makes us think about all these issues. She makes us reflect on inequality in death, on the lives that matter as well as those that are lost; on which lives are grievable.

There is no denying this desolate scenario, even when some insist on it. We share this collective mourning. It is about claiming the right to experience it. “Finding ways to defend a more egalitarian society requires a public policy on mourning and memory,” says Carla.
Guacira Lopes Louro