ABSTRACT
Narratives of refugeehood and precarity are rife with loss. Paradoxically, in approaches of academic inquiry, humanitarianism aid and policy-making considerations of grievance and grief in the lives of the affected tend to be eclipsed or sidelined. This devalues the affectivity of the subject both as a matter of concern and the subject (person). The matter of concern of this text is to tackle the alienation of affectivity of the subject (in this text: queer exiles in Finland) from the officialized and sanctioned registers of knowledge at the centre of that affectivity. I ask what happens to grief and grievances when they are taken as residual to the subject matter; when the issue is reduced to the manageability of a human subject in trouble – that is often, if not always, equated to trouble. And inversely, what potential does collective grieving that is not riven or precluded by categorical hindrances hold for matters of collective concern. I argue that recognizing the sense of grievability across lines of difference/othering holds precious, but precarious (othered/discounted) knowledge of how to live and survive socially.
