To Have Clean Hands: The State Suppression of Grief

‘To Have Clean Hands’ is the title of my Master’s Thesis in which I researched the necropolitical implications of the state’s exposure of its citizens to risk factors of Prolonged Grief Disorder and how the state actively benefitted from it. Through an analysis of New York City during COVID-19, I show how the rupture of normative funerary practices and lack of access to the dead and dying, exposed the city’s population to an increased risk of developing Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD). PGD is a necropolitical mechanism that actively benefits the state, as it keeps those who lost a loved one to COVID-19 in a state of paralysis that prevents them from speaking out against those who made the lethal decisions that contributed to their loved ones’ deaths.

The series of three thesis books were bound and printed at Design Academy Eindhoven.