14. Charles Briggs on the Work of Mourning

Charles Briggs talks to psychoanalyst Maureen Katz about the anthropology of mourning. They discuss a letter titled “Dear Dr. Freud” that Professor Briggs wrote to Sigmund Freud about the experience of a traumatic epidemic in rural Venezuela. They consider how he was drawn into the mourning process as an anthropologist and photographer, and how mourners framed their work of mourning in relation to the long history of colonialism. They end the episode by talking about how anthropology itself might be reconsidered as the work of mourning.