64: Grief, Loss, and Love feat. Sarah Jaffe

Aug 17, 2024

Sarah Jaffe, a labor journalist and author, joins for an insightful conversation about her forthcoming book, "From the Ashes." They explore the transformative nature of grief, intertwining personal and collective experiences. The discussion navigates how mourning reshapes identity and facilitates social solidarity. Jaffe critiques societal norms around loss, from Freud's theories to modern expectations, emphasizing the impact of collective grief on identity and community resilience. Their conversation highlights the emotional bonds between work, love, and the experiences of loss.

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Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 2min

Exploring the Transformative Nature of Grief and Mourning

01:53 • 4min

Exploring Grief and Psychoanalysis: Beyond Replacement

06:09 • 2min

Emotional Capacity and the Power of Vulnerability in Relationships

08:30 • 4min

Grief and Labor: A Conversation on Loss

12:20 • 19min

Navigating Grief and Collective Loss

30:51 • 11min

Navigating Grief and Love

41:25 • 31min

Navigating Grief and Hope

01:12:09 • 26min

Understanding Grief, Trauma, and Healing in the Body

01:37:57 • 6min

Abby and Patrick welcome labor journalist Sarah Jaffe – author of Necessary Trouble and Work Won’t Love You Back – for her first interview about her forthcoming book, From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire. From the Ashes is at once a deeply personal narrative and a wide-ranging journey of searing reportage on the lives and struggles of individuals and communities. Sarah, Abby, and Patrick take on the overdeterminations of loss, grief, mourning, and memorialization from contemporary political discourse to Freud’s classic “Mourning and Melancholia.” In what ways can individual experiences of grief be fundamentally singular and yet also sites of collective solidarity and social transformation? What are the norms, narratives, and timelines that get imposed on expressions of psychic pain in the wake of loss, from the DSM to Human Resources to newspaper headlines? How does the experience of loss differ when the lost object in question isn’t necessarily a person, but a place, an ideal, intergenerational links, or expectations for a now-foreclosed future instead?

Details about From the Ashes are here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sarah-jaffe/from-the-ashes/9781541703490/ and the book is available for preorder here: https://hachettebookgroup.formstack.com/forms/fromtheashes (use code FTA20 for 20% off, plus bonus content)

Sarah’s website is here: https://sarahljaffe.com/

Key texts cited in the episode:

Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”

Freud, “On Transience”

Jacqueline Rose, “Virginia Woolf and the Death of Modernism”

Namwali Serpell, The Furrows

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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music