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<p>This dissertation argues for a version of democratic theory, and institutions of
democratic practice, that would call for and help to nurture a form of civic identity--individual
and collective--committed to a "work of mourning" over the historical and enduring
traumas surrounding racial discrimination and violence in the United States. By a
reading of psychoanalytic theory in conversation with political and social theory,
I show that mourning should be considered less as a limited response to particular
loss--one that will resolve itself after a certain lapse of time--than as a process
of identity formation through recognition of, and reflection on, formative traumas
in the democratic polity. Using the work of Melanie Klein in particular, I argue
that the work of mourning not only implies the working through of mundane losses and
traumas, but the development of a certain identity (in what Klein calls the "depressive
position") that is sensitive to the larger scenes of persecution and violence that
shape the social and political landscape. For Klein, mourning is ultimately the process
of establishing internal objects that enrich the self's capacity to mitigate its hatred,
fear, envy, and greed with reparative guilt and love. Klein's descriptions of inter-subjective
mourning have relevance outside the comparatively narrow confines of the analytic
situation. I argue that Klein's theories of mourning and identity can enhance collective
efforts to address the traumas surrounding racial violence and discrimination in the
United States. I illustrate this connection by examining the experience of the Greensboro
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (GTRC), which operated in Greensboro, North Carolina
from 2004 to 2006.</p>
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