Skip to main content

BSc Social Sciences Annual Lecture: The Weight of the World - Stories of Diasporic Dying

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

No booking required

The Weight of the World - Stories of Diasporic Dying


Dr Yasmin Gunaratnam

Senior Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London

In this lecture my focus is on social pain and suffering for dying migrants in British cities. Engaging with ideas and research from sociology, palliative care and neuroscience, I will argue that pain at the end of life for migrants is not easily located in physiology or in our usual linear ways of understanding time. The pain and trauma of past injustices and violations can be re-experienced in the present and can intervene in clock time, so that the past and the present become mixed up. Drawing upon two decades of qualitative research, I will discuss examples from my British Academy funded 'Case Stories' project (2013-14). The Case Stories project uses stories, poems, visual images and what I am calling 'empirical performance' to evoke how the pain of social inequality and injustice can build up and be scattered over a life time, intermingling with biochemistry and rearranging now and then, here and there. As some social researchers suggest, such 'social suffering' is ephemeral and ghostly. It cannot always be spoken or pinned down to a secure referent or point of origin. Using audio-visual examples, I will show how I have been using stories to try to substantiate, or at least suggest, how social pain can be experienced at the end of migrant's life. A key idea I will explore is temporal otherness and how social pain can produce different ways of telling and thinking about time.
Followed by a wine reception

The Weight of the World - Stories of Diasporic Dying Dr Yasmin GunaratnamSenior Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London In this lecture my focus is on social pain and suffering for dying migrants in British cities. Engaging with ideas and research from sociology, palliative care and neuroscience, I will argue that pain at the end of life for migrants is not easily located in physiology or in our usual linear ways of understanding time. The pain and trauma of past injustices and violations can be re-experienced in the present and can intervene in clock time, so that the past and the present become mixed up. Drawing upon two decades of qualitative research, I will discuss examples from my British Academy funded 'Case Stories' project (2013-14). The Case Stories project uses stories, poems, visual images and what I am calling 'empirical performance' to evoke how the pain of social inequality and injustice can build up and be scattered over a life time, intermingling with biochemistry and rearranging now and then, here and there. As some social researchers suggest, such 'social suffering' is ephemeral and ghostly. It cannot always be spoken or pinned down to a secure referent or point of origin. Using audio-visual examples, I will show how I have been using stories to try to substantiate, or at least suggest, how social pain can be experienced at the end of migrant's life. A key idea I will explore is temporal otherness and how social pain can produce different ways of telling and thinking about time.

This event will be followed by a wine reception.

This event is free, but booking is essential - please register via Eventbrite.