The mourning as functioning of language

Abstract

In this article, we take mourning as discourse, configured as effect of meaning produced in and by the functioning of language. In doing so, we question how the meaning of mourning moves, gains directions by materializing relations with other meaning(s), which makes the meaning of mourning visible as non-one, as a point of possible discursive articulations – sustaining relations in and of the discursive thread – and discursive latitudes – distending-(re)arranging relations in and of the discursive thread. It is through these articulations and latitudes that the non-one meaning of mourning is constituted as a metaphor and, in this way, it structures and is structured by the production of discursivities that signify different social formations in different directions. In order to read how the mourning metaphor produces drifts, we methodologically expose it to others, such as that of the mirror – "an image that is disturbed/an image that disturbs" – and that of suffocation – "it is not possible to breathe". We understand, therefore, how the non-one meaning of mourning works by invoking relations that historicize different ways of "being in mourning", that is, different ways of (re)producing the movement of presence-absence in and through language that determine certain movements of symbolic identification in and for the subject.