Mourning and Political Engagement: How do we respond to environmental loss?

No matter how powerful our efforts to curb the destruction, climate change and environmental degradation will cause the loss of many animal species and habitats — a process that is already underway.

Dozens of species of plants and animals go extinct every day and it is estimated that 30 to 50 percent of all species could be heading for extinction by mid-century. For many of us, this kind of information evokes a sense of hopelessness, grief or dread, yet our culture offers no socially sanctioned ways of honouring these feelings.

How do we react to this unprecedented environmental destruction? Recognizing that some degree of loss is now unavoidable, do we respond with resignation and paralysis? Can our grief become a source of empowerment?

This public conversation invites participants to explore the role of grief in taking action. In a society where sorrow is normally experienced privately can mourning be political?

Guests

Matthias Fritsch is a German-born philosopher whose research in moral and political theory focuses on historical justice, theories of democracy, and the critical theory of society. At present, he is writing a book on the role played by dead and unborn generations in forming human agency, and what we the presently living owe to future people.

Rebekah Hart is a Montreal-based drama therapist, activist, couple and family therapist in training, and a long-time facilitator of The Work that Reconnects. Rebekah facilitates collective processes that support activists -— or anyone concerned about our world — to honour feelings such as despair, grief or anger as healthy responses to a planet in crisis, prevent burnout, and strengthen our capacity to act for a just and sustainable world.

Moderator

As Concordia’s Community Relations Coordinator, Eryn Fitzgerald, is blessed with many opportunities to reflect on political engagement. However, she rarely gets to unpack the multitude of emotions accompanying ecological and social destruction. Eryn looks forward to holding space for this timely conversation with enormous transformative potential.