Mournings and Uncertainties Kyoung Kim PhD in Art Goldsmiths, University of London 2018 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Kyoung Kim ______________________________________________ 2 Acknowledgements Thank you Mark Dean and Michael Newman for supervisory support and guidance that, while productively demanding and rigorous, was always humane; thank you above all, for your trust, patience, and kindness. Thank you Sharon Morris and Shela Sheikh for your serious attention and critical openness towards examining and discussing this project, which has helped to refine and clarify my communication of it. Thank you to the Goldsmiths International Postgraduate Research Scholarship Fund, Goldsmiths Art Department Research Bursary Fund, and Goldsmiths Art Department Research Support Award Fund for financial support, and the Goldsmiths Art Department Postgraduate Tutor scheme and the Trelex Art Residency for professional support of this practice-based art research. Thank you Jaskaran Kaur for the invitation to work with you and Ensaaf (ensaaf.org), which has been a challenging motivation and guide throughout this process. Thank you Manuel Angel-Macia for reading, giving feedback on, and discussing so many iterations of this, and your unfailing generosity as a friend and colleague from the earliest days through to final submission. Thank you Irene Gedalof, Joanna ‘A good PhD is a done PhD’ Pares Hoare, Gina Heathcote, Rutvica Andrijasevic, Avtar Brah, Aisha Gill, Yasmin Gunaratnam, Carrie Hamilton, Ioana Szeman, Navtej Purewal and Sadie Wearing of the Feminist Review Collective; Sara Roberts; and Kristen Kreider for your encouragement and care both in our interactions and by your example. Thank you Soon Ja Cho, Keunai Kim Chang, Young Ok Kim, and Yung Soon Kim for your belief and support. Thank you Linda Aloysius, Emma Brasó, Kelly Cheng, Michelle Corvette, Anya Eckbo, Nick Ferguson, Ekaterina Golubina, Silke Helmerdig, Hyeisoo Kim, Ruby Kwon, Yuna Lee, Nuno Ramalho, Michaele Pauwen Simmering, Edwina Portocarrero, Lisa Ramon, Carolina Rito, Stefanie Sommer, Francisco Sousa Lobo, Linda Stupart, Peter Wilton, and Ja-hyuk Yim. Thank you to my parents, Kol and Jungsoon Kim, and to Wook, Sahn, Grace, Adele, Moody, and Mola. Thank you Kathryn M. Heim for being there through it all and then some. Thank you Edward Oliver. Thank you to the persons whose words, art, images, sounds, gestures, practices, and actions I have been able to engage, such that although this has been a brain-breaking and at times heartbreaking exploration, it has not been a lonely one, with good company encountered at each turn. Thank you Monghue, for daring to imagine. Thank you. 3 Abstract This project makes available a language by which mourning can be expressed and explored as an epistemic concern and as an urgent matter to rethink politics in relation to difference. Through a situated, multidirectional investigation of its sensory, political, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic distributions, I claim that mourning—as the perceiving of alterity in relation to perceived ‘loss’—produces a political subject exposed to uncertainty and the possibilities of community and ‘moaning’. I propose ‘moaning’ as a mode of perceptual uncertain knowledge production. Engaging with Fred Moten’s (2003) conceptualisation of ‘black mo’nin’’ in relation to postmortem photographs of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955, I examine the socio-political stakes of moaning. Following Moten’s attention to aesthetics as a political and epistemic concern, I formulate two modes of aesthetic perception: ‘moaning aesthetics’ as uncertain re-distributing perceiving of sights and sounds open to new political possibilities; and ‘hegemonic aesthetics’ as a closed, self-affirming cycle between hearing and seeing that disappears politics. I then ask: How, under conditions of political disappearance, might politics be regained by way of perception? Through re/analyses of and re/encounterings with the postmortem photographs of Emmett Till in relation to ‘lynching photographs’ of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, Isaac McGhie, Lige Daniels, William Brown, Laura Nelson, Will James, Richard Dillon, August Goodman, Jesse Washington, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, George Meadows, Garfield Burley, Curtis Brown, Lee Hall, Bennie Simmons, Will Moore, Clyde Johnson, Leonard Woods, John Richards, Rubin Stacy, W.C. or R.C. Williams, and four unidentified persons, and ‘memento mori photographs’ from James Van Der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978) and the Thanatos Archive, I advance that moaning is critical for ‘dis-appearing’—as in appearing new political subjectivities and possibilities from a condition of having been disappeared—and that perceiving political unknown, uncertain possibilities is politically vital. 4 Table of Contents Declaration . 2 Acknowledgements . 3 Abstract . 4 Table of Contents . 5 List of Images . 6 Introduction . 7 Chapter 1: Mourning and Moaning . 29 1.0 Introduction 29 1.1 Mourning Producing Situated Uncertainty 30 1.2 Mourning Producing Impossible Community 37 1.3 Mourning Producing Moaning 41 1.4 Moaning Producing the Possibility of Possible Communities 43 1.5 Moaning Perceiving 46 1.6 Conclusion 54 Chapter 2: Perceiving Moaning . 55 2.0 Introduction 55 2.1 Encountering the Postmortem Photographs of Emmett Till 60 2.2 Moaning Aesthetics: Moaning and Fred Moten’s ‘Black Mo’nin’’ 68 2.3 Hegemonic Aesthetics: Ocularcentrism and Obfuscuration 71 2.4 Conclusion 83 Chapter 3: Perceiving Hegemonic Aesthetics . 86 3.0 Introduction 86 3.1 Perceiving the Hegemonic Aesthetics of ‘Lynching as Justice Against Criminality’ 118 3.2 Perceiving the Hegemonic Aesthetics of ‘Lynching as Racial Violence’ and ‘Strange Fruit’ 135 3.3 Hegemonic Aesthetics Disappearing 153 3.4 Conclusion 154 Chapter 4: Moaning Perceiving Dis-Appearing . 156 4.0 Introduction 156 4.1 Dis-appearing 158 4.2 Re-turning to the Postmortem Photographs of Emmett Till 161 4.3 Perceiving Intersecting Breaking 175 4.4 Dis-appearing Slowly Uncertainly 180 4.5 Conclusion 182 Appendices . 186 Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms 186 Appendix 2: Mourning Practices Mentioned in the Dissertation 189 Appendix 3: Defining Death 190 References . 192 Portfolio . 205 5 List of Images Postmortem photograph of Emmett Till (1955) 61 Postmortem photograph of Emmett Till with Mamie Elizabeth Till-Bradley and relative (1955) 62 Postmortem photograph of Emmett Till in a coffin (1955) 63 Postmortem photograph of Emmett Till in a coffin with Mamie Elizabeth Till-Bradley (1955) 64 Postmortem photograph of Emmett Till with family and friends (1955) 65 Lynching photograph of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie (1920), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 91 Lynching photograph of Lige Daniels (1920), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 92 Lynching photograph of William Brown (1919), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 93 Lynching photograph of Laura Nelson (1911), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 94 Lynching photograph of Laura Nelson at a distance (1911), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 95 Lynching photograph of Will James (1909), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 96 Lynching photograph of Richard Dillon (1904), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 97 Lynching photograph of August Goodman (1905), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 98 Lynching photograph of unidentified black person (1910), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 99 Lynching photograph of Jesse Washington (1916), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 100 Lynching photograph of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith (1930), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 101 Lynching photograph of unidentified black person (1900), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 102 Lynching photograph of George Meadows (1880), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 103 Lynching photograph of Garfield Burley and Curtis Brown (1902), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 104 Lynching photograph of Lee Hall (1903), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 105 Lynching photograph of Bennie Simmons (1913), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 106 Lynching photograph of Will Moore (1919), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 107 Lynching photograph of Clyde Johnson (1935), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 108 Lynching photograph of Jesse Washington lynchmob (1916), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 109 Lynching photograph of Jesse Washington (1916), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 110 Lynching photograph of Leonard Woods (1927), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 111 Lynching photograph of John Richards (1916), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 112 Lynching photograph of unidentified black person (1920), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 113 Lynching photograph of Rubin Stacy (1935), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 114 Lynching photograph of W.C. or R.C. Williams (1938), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 115 Lynching photograph of unidentified black person (1902), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 116 Lynching photograph of Will James, ‘Ashes of James’ (1909), Collection of J. Allen and J. Littlefield 117 Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion (Collected by his Widow) (1648), painted by N. Poussin 159 Memento mori photograph of unnamed corpse (n.d.), photographed by J. Van Der Zee 163 Memento mori photograph of unnamed corpse (n.d.), photographed by J. Van Der Zee 164 Memento mori photograph of unnamed corpse (n.d.), photographed by J.