From The Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire

Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change. We are in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. What can we do?

This is capitalism's death phase, and this crushing daily reality its violent, thrashing excrescence. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for most of the world’s population. The marginalized and the vulnerable have been feeling the weight of this crisis for a long time, but it is increasingly pressing down on all of us. And yet we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed.

At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. In her book, From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, veteran labour journalist Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world. In it, she argues that when we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

What could this collective mourning look like? How do we slow down and grieve when everything about the world lashes at our backs and demands we move on? For this launch event, Jaffe will discuss all of this and more.