Disenfranchised Grief Revisited: Discounting Hope and Love

Abstract

Kenneth Doka's two anthologies on disenfranchised grief (Doka, 1989, 2002) are filled with discussions of the effects of disenfranchisement and its scope. The present article furthers reflection on both topics. It first explores the nature of disenfranchisement as a denial of a mourner's “right to grieve” and analyzes the empathic, political, and ethical failures involved in this denial. It then notes that the literature on the subject is dominated by treatments of the disenfranchisement of suffering. And it urges that the scope of disenfranchisement extends to efforts to overcome suffering, the constructive labors of hope and love at the heart of grieving response to bereavement.