Holding grief in community: witnessing the organizing force of grief

In this paper, we analyze how grief organizes us and our relations in academic work. Through engaging in collective embodied autoethnography and affective witnessing of each other’s grief, we explore grief as an affective condition and force that flows between bodies, and contend that grief needs space in academic life. Bearing witness to grief, surrendering to and staying with it, we have nurtured bonds of solidarity and been moved to reshape our ways of being in relation to each other, ourselves, and the world. Based upon our experience of shared vulnerability and connection, we suggest that grief held in community may act as an affective organizing force: an interruption, guide and teacher that urges us toward becoming more care-full scholars, opening ethico-political possibilities for doing research and academia differently.