Co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department, the Laura C. Harris Fund, Foresman Fund: Department of Modern Languages, and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

¡°Bodies of Sorrow: Resistant Mourning, Becoming-with and Coalitional Politics¡±
Reflecting on hurricane Katrina, artist Kara Walker refers to the murky, toxic, filthy waters left after the devastation as ¡°muck¡± and takes this muck as representative of racist pathology. In this presentation Ortega discusses the sorrow that flows from this muck and is associated with the injustice that arises from the racism and xenophobia that is pervasive in the U.S.A. Sorrow is explained in connection to the work of W.E.B Dubois, and is connected to the kind of melancholia that bodies of color experience given their being in worlds that consider them unwanted¡ªa melancholia that can nevertheless be resistant. Finally, Ortega discusses the possibilities of becoming-with and coalitional politics in the face of the muck of racism and xenophobia.

Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University. Her areas of research are 20th century Continental Philosophy, (Existential Phenomenology, Heidegger), Women of Color feminisms (emphasis on Latina Feminism), and Philosophy of Race. She is also interested in Aesthetics, Photographic theory, Latin American thought, and Philosophy and Literature.